Binge and Purge

No, I'm not talking bulimia, although I did toy around with that a bit as a teenager. But then someone told me it would rot my teeth and I gave it up. Who wants to be rail thin but toothless? Kind of a crappy trade-off. Kind of sad though that, prior to informing me about the tooth rot issue, I was told my esophagus would get destroyed and I didn't even think twice about that. After all, who cares if I don't have a pretty esophagus and can't speak! Ah the vanity of a teenage girl. So I gave up puking and took up dropping acid and walking twenty or so miles in eight hours a few times a month. Best diet ever.

The binging and purging I'm referring to is that of my stuff. Stuff, junk, that I've collected over the years. I binged when we had money. I have enough Bath and Body Works lotion moisturize the entire alligator population in Florida for a year. Stockpiles of food I don't even like, clothes I've never worn, and votive candles I'll never light because Jake would use them to start the Great Poconos Fire to rival that of O'Leary's cow. That's just the stuff I bought. Forget about the stuff I've saved "just in case." Bottle inserts from when Jake was still using a ba, coffee cans, plastic containers, old school assignments, phone bills from over a decade ago. The list goes on and on. I live in a relatively small area, and the clutter was out of control. It never bothered me until about two weeks ago. Then I just snapped.

I started throwing out shit like you wouldn't believe. Two huge garbage bags of clothes went to goodwill and another huge bag in the garbage (I didn't think anyone wanted to wear my old underwear that were reserved for that most wonderful time of the month, or the pajamas that my naked butt slept in for years). Every single sock (of which I used to have two full drawers) that had even a hint of a hole went in the garbage. The big bin of "maybe I'll find their mates someday" socks? Gone, after I used them to scrub the floors of course, in a random effort to be more environmentally conscious, or conserve money on paper towels.

I discovered a few things. The most shocking was that there is a floor in my bedroom. The second most shocking was that I actually feel a lot better when every surface of my house isn't covered with random stuff. It's kind of liberating to get rid of crap. I still have a long way to go, but eventually I'll get down to having just the stuff I actually want, and not the stuff I feel obligated to keep because I spent money on it at some point. I'm sure that this sudden motivation to clean everything in sight will die off sooner than later, so I'm trying to make the best of it while I can.