All But the Memories Thrown Away - Letting Go of Stuff is Hard To Do

We ended up the house cleaning by throwing away all the boys' toys that were packed in boxes and stored in the back room ever since we moved into this house. There goes all my hard earned money. It would easily made up to $3,000 or more worth of figurines of WWF, Ninja Turtles, Rat Rangers, Spiderman, Ultraman, Power Rangers, and all the Barbie dolls that Erin thought were evil and crazy.

Why do I keep all these toys when the children are all grown up and have phased out of playing with figurines and plastic guns. They were in boxes, and hadn’t seen the daylight since Erin was 4.

Why do I save such things?

There's a pair of Erin's pink baju kurung back when she was 1 year old. Her first Hari Raya celebration. I kept it because I thought one day, someone in the family might have a little girl, who I could pass it down to. That day never come, and the pair of pink baju kurung made of soft brocade still folded neatly in the box with Erin's pink tutu and ballet shoes.

If I have an empty box lying around, I will fill it with stuff that I feel I should save. Note books, bills, account statements, mails and papers that I will never look at. Under my bed, there are shoes that were worn lightly by the children, and I feel guilty of throwing them away.

Funny thing is that you never use the stuff in those boxes, and you never go look at it either. So you don't even really use them to recall things, except when trying to throw them away. And you never miss those memories when they're not recalled, because, of course, you don't really remember them actively then.

So what do you do? Well, for me, each time I go through old stuff, I manage to throw away some of it. Some of it doesn't really bring up any memories. But what to do about the rest, eh? Well, you can just keep storing them in boxes, taking space, and not really doing anything else. Or, you could throw them away, but after -- and this is the master plan -- you have photographed them. It's such a simple idea, it's weird I never thought about it until this week. But I never get around doing it.

It's hard to know how much of your life you ought to try and save so you can enjoy remembering it. Sometimes all you can remember are the things you'd rather forget.

My life is cluttered with things I've saved. Most of them aren't worth saving but I can't bring myself to throw them away, until Jazz helped me last evening. All is gone now. The papers, the toys, the clothes, all but memories will be kept deep inside my heart, even without the memorabilia and plastic trophies. I don't have to keep anything to remind me of the past, the memories will live within me, the good, the bad, even the worst. But as I move forward, I hope that only good memories lingers on. As someone once said to me "Time Heals All".

At last, I feel free. Weird, but true.