I have a small collection of books on managing clutter. I bought them years ago. I'm not sure I've ever read them all... (No time!) But this summer, as I try to organize some cluttered spaces in my home, I have been looking at them again. And I'm reading them in small bits... (So as not to clutter my mind!)
One thought that jumped out at me (from the book, Unclutter Your Home by Donna Smallin) was this: Sometimes we have a hard time letting go of objects because it would mean giving up a dream we've held on to for a long time...
That dream, in my case, could be as simple as exercising more... (so I can't get rid of the exercise bike I rarely use) to writing a book or two (so I don't want to toss a filing cabinet full of papers - ideas, notes, letters, diaries that I'm actually afraid to look at... because I know how much work following that dream - i.e., writing that book - will entail!) Do I really want to do it? What has been holding me back thus far? Lack of time... lack of desire... or fear?
Will that dream ever be a priority for me?
Life entails a constant re-evaluating of priorities: Prioritizing is another kind of (mental) de-cluttering. I always have more ideas than energy - but I don't want to give up certain dreams... Not yet, anyway.
I find it interesting - as I sort through my mother's things... (Boxes of things I brought home after emptying her apartment... and have left untouched in my basement for the past year...) What has held me back? Laziness? A fear of facing the contents and having to make some hard decisions? Wondering what to toss and what she might someday, out of the blue, ask me to bring to her in her new home (one room in a retirement residence...)?
(I should probably add that in this new home, she is rarely in her room because she loves to participate in their roster of activities!)
But I find it interesting to see what she has hung on to, as she has downsized time after time, from a family home, to an apartment, to one large bedroom with a bed, bookcase and a TV...
Interesting to realize what she has valued enough to hold on to...
I see pictures and momentos of happy times spent with family and friends, devotional books that strengthen her faith in God... And MUSIC - CD's, tapes, songbooks, photocopied sheets of old favorites...
I sing every day, she tells me. I love those old songs.
Her voice is still strong and melodic... (Stronger than mine.)
I never realized how important music was to her. She didn't have time for much singing when we were growing up. She had a Hawaiian guitar that she never used. She had bought it when she lived alone in a "teacherage" up north, a tiny home beside her one-room school in the Peace River Country... She wanted to learn to play it. She never did. Then when she retired, she took up piano and organ, and enjoyed playing both. Music was a latent interest that blossomed in retirement...
I realize also that her love of music had probably attracted her to my father, a self-taught musician who, when they first met, led a dance band that entertained at country weddings.
Now, at 91 - her love of music continues...
What dreams will I hold on to? Which ones will I let go, as I get older and simplify my life?
Perhaps I'll only discover when I re-organize and de-clutter... again and again and again!
(But, at the same time, I have to give myself permission to let go of certain dreams...)
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