Purge

Today I did a purge of unnecessary items in my apartment. I live in a small space by choice and not necessity. I earn enough money to upgrade to a two bedroom apartment or buy a modest condo, but I choose to rent.

I am usually pretty ruthless about clutter because to me it’s visual noise. It makes me anxious. I grew up listening to stories about my family’s life during The Depression and I think that is why clutter was a constant growing up.  The lessons about The Depression were lost on me for a very long time because the recurring theme was never throw anything out.  Now as an adult living in a global economy, I’ve had the opportunity to  re-evaluate those lessons, and I now know the value of understanding that anyone can be a victim of an economic meltdown. It’s not about hanging onto things, but making sure that those things, in good and bad times, don’t create an unsustainable lifestyle.

Today I went through stuff and ditched and donated stuff that I was holding onto for no reason. I still have a lot of things that I keep that are silly sentimental items like a ping pong paddle I used in high school gym class, a puppet I got when I was 5 and a (now broken from overuse) cordless drill my brother gave me for my birthday years ago.

But there was one household item I was holding onto that was neither sentimental or necessary.

Twelve bank books.

With online banking there is little reason to use bank books, let alone keep 12 full bank books. I hung on to them for years for only one reason. They were an archive of the time in my life when I went from  debt  to  no debt.

There is a story behind this but it’s a story so painful that I can barely talk to myself about it let alone post it for my seven fans. I think the presence of the bankbooks reminded me more of the dark times rather than the times when I got my shit together and erased my debt.

So tomorrow into the Shred It bin they go.