Coming clean

I have never been a neat person. My bedroom is crammed with books, magazines, bags, hats, random pieces of paper, and boxes. My bags are lined with old tubes of lip balm, broken combs, receipts and pairs of earrings. The cork part of my corkboard is completely covered with pictures, nametags and magazine ads. Contrary to popular belief, however, I am never bothered by the "mess." I always know where everything is. I learned in philosophy class last year that according to the early Greek philosophers, the world has a certain beauty, which is called kosmos, and order, called dike. This order doesn’t mean perfect organization and categorization, but my own personal and beautiful order, under which I know and understand where everything is. (Okay, I hope I still understand my philosophy correctly.) Even if my room looks like a bomb exploded in it, I know where everything is. I know where my tweezers are, where my photo albums are, and where my copy of Vanity Fair with the Cruises on the cover is.

However, there comes a time in a girl’s life when she gets tired of rifling through an entire pile of random things before she finds what she’s looking for. I can’t walk around my room without tripping over a shoe, a pair of jeans, or my stuffed Luigi doll (from Cars! He’s adorable). Sometimes I even have to sleep on just half of my bed because I unloaded my bag on it and there’s just too much stuff to clear out. Something’s definitely wrong when it begins to invade my sleeping space. So I decided to start cleaning out my things.

Unfortunately, like my mother and my grandmother, I have a difficult time throwing things away. Old magazines, handouts, letters, pictures… they all take up their space in my room, but I can’t bring myself to throw them away. Some of those things represent some of my most beloved memories. Other things, I admit, I just keep because I might need them someday. But it still keeps me from throwing them out.

As I sat on the floor, surrounded by so many memories, I suddenly remembered having gone through the same experience before. In fact, I had written an article about it that was called, if I’m not mistaken, "A Roomful of Memories." I had attempted to clean out my room and had come across countless "memories," from withered roses to pin-ups of Joshua Jackson, which I lovingly placed back into their rightful places in my room.

Years later, I looked around my room and thought they were probably still there — somewhere there. I realized, for the first time, I had no idea where these "beloved" things were. An avalanche of other things had fallen on top of them and they had been swallowed up by the current objects of my affection, things that I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. I imagined the process of accumulating more concrete memories going on forever, and my room slowly filling up with these little trinkets until I could no longer get through the front door.

How often did I take out all those things to reminisce? I can’t remember the last time that I did. Maybe I just love the idea of having them around. I love memories, but sometimes the past has a way of keeping you from moving forward. I looked around my room again. While there had been a lot of little additions — a banner here, a new pile of books there — it was still pretty much the same. I hadn’t gotten the chance to change it up to suit my current taste. The OC had come and gone, but it was still Dawson’s Creek posters up on my corkboard. If we dwell on the past too much, we pass up the chance to change and grow. Whether we like it or not, it takes an extra effort to accommodate changes in our lives. We have to make choices. We have to make space. We have to let things go. We have to let things change.

Another thing that I learned in philosophy is that you can never step in the same river again. Maybe it’s the same with people. We are changed by each new experience, although we remain who we are essentially. No matter how much we want to hold on to diaries or movie tickets, life will go on. We have to move on. Of course, I would be a fool to discard my souvenirs, but now I’m more aware that life is not all about collecting memories, but making them.

I’m still going to be a messy person, but I think I’m going to try and really, really clean out my room this time around (my mother is going to rejoice when she reads this). It will still be a roomful of memories, only I’m going to make space for new ones.