Cluttering around our rooms has always been a bad idea. It is difficult to remember the number of times my mother has scolded me to clean my room. To take out all the unnecessary stuff I have accumulated over time. We all share this experience. Sometimes it is necessary to let go of something we are obsessed with withholding. It may be the blanket from our childhood, the colour worn out, mended with various patches or the old clothes you overgrew ages ago.
It is a saddening affair to let go of years and years of memory, which we may not even look upon daily, but preserved in dull cardboards stored in a room filled with dust and webs.
Why is it difficult? I question myself this time to time as I stare at my room filled with old and aged articles, things I cannot see the use of anymore. So why is it difficult? To put these boxes aside and let go.
It is inevitable to move forward with life. We must not hoard stuff with every new house, along with every new beginning. Moving out from home to college, we only take the necessary. Settling from work to family, we create new importance. So at what place do these old and aged reside?
A tedious process, what to keep and what to let go off? I remember small moments of my childhood. I preserve all the grudges, all the idle conversation I can hold in this heart of mine.
This cognitive stacking manifests into my physical space. In my house, in my living room, from old happy birthday cards to notebooks with incorrect spellings. The walls of my kitchen are fussy with old pictures. Old papers of insignificant small seconds are hidden somewhere in every room. And as a consequence, I live in clutter, in a shabby room full of boxes and closets. Filled to the brim and keep filling them with more.
I ponder over old memories, conversations only known to me, gestures from a year ago which have lost their meaning and insignificant messages. I congest my thoughts and choke them with spider webs and dust. The clutter which I stand on stops me from moving forward. Too much of something has never served a good purpose. Swimming in the reminiscence of the past every day blocks me from addressing the upcoming reality.
And through the process of accumulation, hoarding and not letting go of the clutter, it becomes so big that I cannot even step into the living room. Being stuck at one place in the house brings anxiety. What if there is someone at the door?. Can I ever get out? What if I miss all the new things waiting outside the door of my house?
The clutter I surrounded myself with to preserve the sweet memories has become the obstacle of my life.
We tend to rush into the arms of old habits, over-familiarity whenever something painful occurs. The clutter that helped me to cope now stops me from stepping freely. Excessiveness of anything is hazardous, and who might know that somewhere lying in this clutter might be an un-addressed blade or sharp words.
Address your clutter, your overused thoughts and old habits. Unattended boxes over time leave no space for the new one. We need to let things out. We cannot cage every second of ours in our thoughts and overthink.
Deconstruct it. Create a balance between memory and necessity. The old brushes, the tiny clothes, the school notebooks and idle doodles. Do they have meaning instead of taking up unnecessary space? The same analogy works for the cognitive stack I have created over time. I cannot only mull over what has already happened. I cannot live only in the friendships, laughs and memories I had forever.
New is scary sometimes, but if we don't have enough space to let it sit for a while, it will never be a part of our house, or ourselves. Try to disassemble your clutter. Maybe you'll find a whole new room waiting for you.