Spring Cleaning

            I cleaned my apartment the other day. Actually, I purged my apartment the other day. I’d like to categorize this as Spring cleaning but spring-cleaning sounds like something you do in a sundress and with the windows open. By the time I was half way through I was covered in sweat and dog hair with no pants on.

 I have a bit of an issue with throwing things away. If I had the funds I would rent several storage containers in order to keep all my things. I could fill a container ship and still need extra space.  Unfortunately, my one bedroom in Manhattan does not allow me to hoard the way I would like to. Because of this I spent the better part of an afternoon with multiple keep, maybe keep and definitely keep piles surrounding me along with a much smaller throw away pile hidden in the corner of my bedroom.

I have a habit of holding onto things, not in a dangerous or worrisome way where I keep large amounts of newspapers or animals. It’s more of a, “what if I need this down the line and I can’t afford it later,” kind of way. My hoarding is out of survival not mental illness, or so I tell myself. I have always had an issue with throwing things out since I was a kid and this has followed me into adulthood. It took years to understand why I hold onto things the way I do but it didn’t make it easier to discard my treasures.

            Friday afternoon I decided I needed to get rid of it all. I had recently destroyed the dresser in the bedroom. I had stuffed so much clothing into the Wayfair bureau the bottoms of the drawers had fallen out. If I needed a pair of underwear I would have to play a game of Jenga with the drawers below in order to pull the top drawer out a few inches and slither my hand in to find a pair of jockeys with elastic exploding out of them.

It’s not just clothing I hold onto but it’s also paperwork, jewelry, gifts and cards. I hold onto to it all including gifted clothing from my mother in law who physically can’t buy an extra-large in anything even if it’s not for her. My boyfriend had been on me for weeks about the busted dresser. Not because he cares about my hoarding, but I often require his upper body strength to get a pair of sweat pants out of the leaning tower of wood in the corner of our bedroom. In order to avoid a break up I decided Friday was cleaning day.

I started with the dresser, inside were sweatshirts from seven years ago. Sweatshirts I wore in college when Rory and I first started dating. I had to keep these. An XXL t-shirt from my old job that I have never worn. I needed to keep it... for nostalgia purposes. A pair of leggings I purchased and wore at my frozen yogurt job in 2014. Those went in the maybe pile, I could wear them when I walk the dog. It went on like this for about an hour until I found myself surrounded by several piles of clothing with my dog pulling old socks out of them for his own collection. I decided if it had not been worn it in a year it had to go. This caused some complications for the nostalgia items. At one point I had all my sweatshirts from 2020 in a pile, I thought it may be important to hold onto what I wore during a global pandemic. Maybe my future children would want to see what I wore when I was living in my parent’s basement smoking a pack a day and driving to the beach each afternoon to combat isolation and depression. I compromised with myself and only saved two and started my garbage pile.

Once I committed to throwing things away the pile grew larger than I had expected. I moved on from my dresser and into the closet. We have one closet in the apartment and it is full of my things. For three years the doors have barely slid open due to the crowded space. I discarded the old sun dresses I wore in Vietnam, recognizing that the memories don’t attach themselves to the clothes. I threw away Fred’s first dog bed that he never used except to poop on once and hump from time to time. By the time Rory came home I was surrounded by landscaper’s bags full of clothing. I was standing on a pile of clothing pulling out work pants from my first internship in college when he tried to navigate around me to the bathroom. As he turned on the shower I asked him if he was proud of me, I was standing on a pile of memories and wearing two old scarves.

It’s hard to explain why I hold onto everything. When I was younger I lived in a pay check to pay check home and I was food bank kid. It took years for me to get over the shame and the embarrassment of it. Now as an adult I have so much gratitude for my mother who kept a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. Every Tuesday she would pick up groceries from the food bank from wives and mothers she went to high school with. I only went with her once when I was in middle school and was so mortified when I saw a classmate helping her mother make our bags I never went back. Being a self-centered tween, I never once thought about what it must have felt like for my Mother. She never let on that she was bothered by it until I was older and we were living in the house she bought herself. For several years we received Christmas gifts from the town, my Mom would always try to get a few other things to supplement the wrongly sized clothing or age inappropriate gifts from our philanthropic community members. Due to our circumstances I would have to make things last. If I got jeans at the beginning of the year they would have to make it to the following school year, a new pair of sneakers had to get me through the winter and the summer. Now that I’m older I can acknowledge the reasons I hold onto things, I’m scared I’m going to lose everything.

I don’t think I’m going to lose all my sneakers or bras, I’m scared I’m going to lose my job and end up with nothing. The financial insecurity from being a poor kid will probably always follow me, or at least that’s what my therapist tells me. Last spring, I asked her why it was so hard for me to speak to my boyfriend about money and why I worry so much about finances. She said my situation was like a house. I was always starting from the basement and trying to make my way up, while most people started on the first or second floor. It’s difficult to explain to someone who has never worried about their financial stability. I will check my bank account every day, that’s just the way it is. My therapist told me she knows people who grew up like me who are successful CEOs and millionaires and still wake up every day and check their accounts convinced it will have all disappeared over night.

Lately I’ve met a lot of people my age who play poor. I don’t find this fashionable, and I hope the trend ends soon. They complain about their rent and their expenses while their parents are still attached to checking accounts and their phone numbers connected to a Verizon family plan. This is a petty complaint but I just don’t understand the need to make up a struggle. Why not enjoy the fact that you have no student loans and you’re in a safe position in life? That’s a dream scenario. I know people who are claiming food stamps while living in an apartment their parents paid for. I want to scream. It’s a bitterness I need to let go, but I’m still hoarding that as well.

After I had stuffed the black bags to their capacity, Rory brought them down to the street that night. In the early hours of the morning a garbage truck would take my things and turn them into garbage and then they would go to live in a landfill. Long after Rory was asleep I was wide awake in bed thinking about my things on the street. I had to stop myself from getting out of bed and bringing the bags back inside. I was almost in tears thinking about my old sweaters and shorts being out there. Even if they were worn and stained and basically hanging on by the loosest threads I felt they didn’t deserve to be discarded. They deserved a Vikings funeral if anything. I fell in love in those t-shirts, I went to friends’ funerals in those dresses, I got my first job in television in that pair of pants. I know they are just material things, but when you didn’t always have things it’s hard to part with them.

While cleaning out my closet I arrived at the conclusion that maybe my brain needed some cleaning out too. Throwing my things out gave me an opportunity to check in with the little kid that still lived inside of me. To acknowledge her and give her (me) some grace when it comes to the habits I’ve held onto. I can’t change overnight, but I can give myself a little more room to grow.