moving, moving and moving

On Saturday, I finally cleaned up the 2nd bedroom which I had used as a "temporary staging" area for the past 4 years that basically had piles of things I hadn't quite figured out where to put. I didn't think of it at first. I just thought, well, as we integrate households, I'll need to reorganize this room to fit more stuff. I even gave myself a reward (Fenton's ice cream) for completing the task. At 9:30 on Saturday night, I was essentially complete: vacuumed, wiped down everything, moved the computer setup, shredded a bunch of old files, recycled a bag of stuff, reorganized a closet. And we went to Fenton's and got a delicious Fenton's sundae.

On Sunday, I ended up getting rid of the emotional clutter that had been tied to this "temporary storage". I could feel it in my body, this change in energy I was not ready for. And as usual, going to kali class, made me fully aware of the change in energy. I wonder if I'm a bit Cenophobia, afraid of empty space. When the hubby suggested putting a table in the corner to serve as a writing desk, I could feel my body panic from any more change. My mind actually agreed with his idea, but my body already rocked from the significant changes, struggled. OK so it sounds like I might be crazy, but I kind of knew this would happen, I just didn't know I'd get it this bad.

I would look into this room over the 4 years and know that there's something that's holding me back or something I'm holding back, something that's stuck and it was represented in this room, I manifested this "stickiness" in this room. And now, for the first time in 4 years (maybe longer), it was unstuck. It's like destroying a dam and feeling the water surge past.

In the afternoon we packed up several boxes at the apartment and took a few boxes to store in the parent's garage. My uncle was building new shelves for them in the garage so they can organize the stuff that's there. My mother too is in the mode of getting rid of things, moving things to places where it'll get more use. The hubby asked her how do you get rid of things. My mom replied that you have to let go of all the emotion. There was a box of party favors from weddings and baby showers that my mother used to collect. She pointed to that box and said, this, I'm going to just throw away not even look at it. She kept the ones that she really liked and are still on display upstairs, but she didn't feel like she needed to keep all of them.

Letting go of the emotion. It's what all the books on clutter and organizing tell you. There is emotion in the stuff we have. Sometimes we even forget why we have the emotion attached to it. We've held onto the things so long we forgot why we kept them in the first place, they become place markers. We can't let go of the stuff because it's just stuff we've always kept or we remember how much it cost when we first bought it and though it's not worth much of anything now, in our minds it's still really expensive.

What I threw away on Saturday were old cancelled checks, some from 10 years ago. What possible emotional attachment would I have to cancelled checks? Maybe like the shopping lists the checks represented the things I had brought into my life, a life I didn't have anymore, a life that has changed. They represented places I used to live in: my parent's home, the room I rented on Telegraph, the studio overlooking the Ethiopian restaurant. Sometimes change hurts even when it's change you want. The body likes habit more than it likes change, inertia as it were.

Tomorrow, I plan to move a bit slower, get used to the " empty space" both inside and out.