There’s a strange little habit I developed over the course of downsizing my personal belongings as well as organizing what is left.
One of the bigger messes digitally I had was my photos. I have somewhere near 100,000 digital photos and a huge mass of them were not organized in any way. And when you have several mini online businesses this becomes a problem when searching for stuff.
So one of the things I’ve under taken the last few years (and this has helped curb doomscrolling too) is to sort, delete, and make folders for events and such in my photo library. I’ve even started going back into the older folders and deleting more photos because as someone who has hosted well over a thousand times in my life, I have had plenty of pictures of people and things that I have no clue who they are or why they are there.
As I have been downsizing my personal belongings I started to photograph stuff leaving the house. This started happening for a couple of reasons: First and foremost, I was having a hard time tracking everything going out and I wanted to keep better tabs on it. Even though things have gone missing plenty of times there were a few that I had just put somewhere or given away that I didn’t recall till later. So yes, tracking them with photos. This helped a lot since we moved and everything was chaos in this old, old house with tons of mess and repairs to be done just to live here.
A second reason has been to track donations. I didn’t do this many times and I lost out on what little deductions I could’ve possibly received(and our world does not reward generous people, only greed -so track those write offs). I have mostly given away, donated, or gifted the things that I have owned. And no I don’t feel bad about getting a tiny, almost minuscule benefit from what I can. It strangely requires a lot of work to give away stuff and clean up your own mess. Never mind trying to be generous. You are basically nothing but a resource to the entirety of the world as it is, never mind if you give stuff away. This becomes all people want from you. I’ve learned to just draw a pretty hard line in the sand when I give things away, you come to pick it up and it’s no longer my repsonsbility.
Of course, no matter how much you give some people, all they ever do is ask for more and this is especially where you need to cut off the line.
I was not good at this for many years and was repeatedly taken advantage of and even when I knew this person was manipulating me, I would still let it happen(I always convinced myself it was fine, they were just in need, they were my friend, blah blah blah)(they are not)(And this doesn’t stop at your belongings. They want your time, resources, money, and energy. You are not allowed to think you will ever receive any of the same support in return. Be warned.) (This is where you will start decluttering people from your life fyi)
However, none of these cover the strange habit I found myself developing which is when I was sorting the bulk of my photos of my old homes, closets, anything that I used to have: I would count the number of things in the picture I no longer owned. It’s strangely satisfying. I might add it’s also become a good way to remember something I had kept around for reasons I didn’t necessarily want to and still have a way to recall that it once was mine without the constant reminders whether they are negative or not. I imagine that I will eventually delete most of these photos as well. But right now they serve as part of a larger life project.
Some of the better advice out there when getting rid of the stuff that’s hard to deal with emotionally is pretty much this: Take a picture of the items and keep a photo album. Then send the items somewhere where it will be appreciated. You can even make notes in the photo album. I find this exceptionally helpful. I’ve not had too many family things or long term friend things simply because of the nature of the relationships that I largely have never had. But a few things here and there were harder to let go of and once I did get photos, it just sort of went away. I have barely thought about anything I’ve gotten rid of, you really just don’t care after it’s gone. Life is too busy and when life gets even the tiniest bit easier you are very grateful for it.
Plus one of the things that helps me is simply asking: Do I want to keep dusting this object, being annoyed, etc… or would money be better? (If it’s something you can sell)
I am gonna guess we all have a pretty similar answer these days. I think this becomes especially true as you get older. You just want some things to be easier.
Now going through the photos led one down memory lane as it does. And I happened across photos of my first technically on my own apartment (I paid for everything).
Well over twenty+ years ago. I was rarely alone even if I tried to be and that did get tiring after a while. I was not good at setting boundaries about my time and space. Plus growing up with family members who had no respect for space or letting you be for even five minutes, this is not a skill you acquire as a child. And you really do need to learn to say no especially when you are a girl. It’s not an accident more women are leaning into drawing lines and boundaries these days. I would guess many grew up like me with a constant barrage of being told to do this or that regardless of how it might negatively effect them.
In my case, I was also guilted into many things like keeping objects/clothes I did not want or even fit me half the time. This doubles up when you are poor, you’re required to be grateful for anything no matter how useless or awful it might be.
My mother would not ever buy anything for me that I actually liked as a kid. I didn’t have a lot of space to develop much of a sense of self or personality. But when I did occasionally find something I liked, my mother hated it. She always bought weird, overly saccharine sweet seeming things that I guess she thought would cover up the reality of our lives.
I mean, no one was going to notice the poverty and wide variety of other issues in a house full of Precious Moments and pink bibles, right?
This also tied into how I didn’t really know how to do much and was continuously getting beat for it without anyone bothering to stop to ask why it is I didn’t know how to use a sewing kit. Well, it turns out you can’t really learn stuff when no one bothers to teach you how to do it (this was long before YouTube). Or even gives you the time to do it.
In the event I was given something I didn’t know what it was or what to do with it, I still kept it because I was trained to be grateful if a bit confused by whatever random thing was set in front of me. Most things were small, but small things add up when you are not allowed to let anything ever move on.
I suspect many women have to deal with this as well. And finally freeing yourself from that guilt or never letting anyone make you feel it at the start is a good place to be. And again, it’s just stuff.
We have been taught to value material things far too much in this world. And we have also been trained to put other people’s manipulations above what is good for own mental health and emotional health. Though I do see some signs that the tide may be slowly (very slowly) turning away from these things.
I recently just sent this off. I have moved house with it four times. The cartoons are cute, but the reason I kept this was it reminded me of my mother’s own interest in this cartoon. That’s it. I didn’t drink from it nor did I have a complete set. It just sat collecting dust.
My bf’s mother randomly gave these to us and she has done this several times with some things she owns. I had never seen them at her house nor did I ever use them. Sat in a box for multiple years. I finally donated them about a year and a half ago. She has given us so little through the years, I had felt something of an obligation to keep them, but then again: why? When she has offered me something I would actually like, my bf’s sister has stepped in and taken it for herself much of the time. Only to put most of it in storage with her many, many other belongings. To be clear, I ask these people for nothing. And I have no attachment to the things they own. So his sister acting as if I was stepping on toes was quite something. But they have always made sure to let me know I am not part of their family.
Some years ago before my mother died, she decided I needed some old Barbies apprently from my childhood. I did not recall these Barbies, but I held onto to them for many years with no idea what to do with them. They lived in a fancy hatbox that I eventually gave away with an actual hat in it. Then Mattel set up a program where you could send them old toys with the possibility of them being recycled. I requested a shipping label a few years ago and sent them in. They still have this program.
My first on my own apartment. I still have a few pieces of the furniture but most everything else is gone(about 55 objects and the curtains, plants, and cat tree also all gone). This was toward the end of my 3 ½ years living there. When I first moved in, it was empty. I have no pictures of that because I had no camera. It was also broken into a couple of times. So that helped with the downsizing you could say.
This picture was taken with a digital camera my bf borrowed from work many years ago. The place was a mess, but it was exciting using it before sending it back to the office. This was my bedroom at the end of my apartment tenure. The only thing I still have is this mirror which is currently hung in the bathroom. Sheets and blankets were so worn they had to recycled, bed frame given away(don’t know currently where it is), mattress and box spring given away, masks and curtains donated after being used in the house I lived in after this place. The county I lived in used to have textiles recycling, disappointingly they no longer do. The bed frame lived in storage for too long since I was emotionally attached to buying myself my first bed(I slept on the floor most of my childhood). It was a good day when I found someone who could use it.
