Progress

by Charity

Yesterday I made some progress.  We've been sorting through some things around the house, trying  to get organized, and perhaps getting rid of some things that no longer serve a purpose.  I'm a saver.  I hold onto things, often longer than I should, and I know that I need to work on this.

I know that this kind of behavior leads to hoarding.  Our mother was a hoarder, and we don't want to end up like that.

To be fair, we're nowhere near where our mother was with this behavior.  We know that she experienced abuse that was far more severe than what we experienced, although we also know that it doesn't really help to compare.  My point is that she became what she became for a reason.  I may not like it, and I may especially dislike the way it affected her ability to raise us, but this is the truth of the matter.

The biggest impetus to begin the whole project was a pile of about six or seven months of junk mail that had accumulated on our kitchen table.  We don't even recycle junk mail without looking at it and shredding anything that has personal information.  At times we feel obsessive about this, but with identity theft being as widespread as it is, we have reason to be careful. We're about 90 percent through the sorting, and then we'll shred what needs to be shredded, which is perhaps about one-third of what was there.

There were other things piled up as well.  Memorabilia, souvenirs, magazines....The simplest thing was to get rid of a few travel-related brochures from several years ago.  I knew that the others had been waiting for me to be ready to do this, and I knew it was time.

We went to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.  I don't like sports, but several of the others with me do.  We saved about a dozen brochures, most of which were about other attractions we saw in town while there to visit the Hall of Fame.  We have no real reason to save all of those brochures.  They have no value to any of us, even though we enjoyed visiting the attractions.  To save for the sake of saving....I tell myself that saving things is proof of our existence, proof that I am real and valid.  I have to accept that self-value comes from within.

So yesterday, in our weeklong sorting project, I finally decided that it was okay to dispose of the brochures.  We kept three that were about the Hall of Fame itself, but the other seven or eight went into the recycling pile.  Others inside applauded me.  The applause felt a little uncomfortable, but I recognized that I did deserve it.

We also have a box of plastic grocery bags, as well as a shopping bag full of shopping bags.  And at work, we have another shopping bag full of bags.  Our co-workers call us "the bag lady."  At home, our collection of bags was overflowing, so we decided to sort out much of it for recycling.  We removed the overflow, as well as about 15 percent of what was in the box itself.  We can do more, but it's a start.

Lastly, we were several months behind in reviewing and reconciling our household expenses.  I don't like to think about money, but I know it's important.  We have people who are savers and who make up for my lack of interest in this.  With Mary's help, I caught up in our recordkeeping.  Mary's desire to help was more for my sake than for any interest in the budget itself, although she too recognizes its importance.

So now we can relax.  We're hoping that the heat isn't as awful as it's been for the last few days.  We'd like to get some rest, and some sense of peace.