Going through some crap

A few weeks before I left for Drake, my mom and I went through EVERYTHING in my room and got rid of a considerable amount of stuff that I don't use anymore. Allow me to make that same recommendation to you.

You need to realize that your room at home will only be inhabited three or four months out of the year and therefore, a lot of the things you have probably won't see much use anyway. Between getting rid of so much and then packing most of what was left to go to school with me, my room was pretty empty. I mean, obviously all the furniture and stuff was there, but all the drawers were only half-full at best.

At first I didn't really like it. I came home from fall break and missed all my stuff at school.

But NOW... all that has changed. What I wouldn't give to have my room back to the way it was during fall break.

I STILL haven’t found homes for all the stuff I brought home from school. There's a laundry basket full of stuff outside my bedroom door, a box of stuff under my table, and heaps of stuff downstairs in my dining room. Where did it all go before I left?

And then what am I supposed to do with all of the new stuff I acquired???

Seriously! It boggles my mind how I could have fit all of that crap into half of a room and then come home to a room just as big, all to myself and still not have room for all of it.

And then I have a lot of stuff that is simply college stuff that I have no need for at home. I have stuff like pillows and a giant trunk that locks closed and stuff. I have pillows already and I'm less than concerned with having my iPod stolen within my own house -- although... my brother is around... just kidding!

The logical thing to do with all of the items that I don't need for the summer is to put them in a specific area in the basement so when the time comes to head back to Drake, we can find everything quickly and not worry about leaving something behind.

I was in my basement a couple of days ago for a reason completely different than to find a place to store my stuff, and I happened to notice a large quantity of ... discarded disarray, lying about the basement floor. I walked around, stepping over boxes of old toys, broken vacuums, a handful of phones, a telescope nobody uses any more and countless other items.

It was time to clean out a little bit.

Somehow, I was able to convince my parents into having a garage sale with pretty much whatever we could find in the basement that was suitable to sell.

As I was looking for things to get rid of, I came across something called "Meagan's Millennium Box." I had absolutely no recollection of ever making said box at all... Before I opened it I thought it might be a time capsule of sorts. I always wanted to make a time capsule. I imagined a picture of N’Sync; something with a Lisa Frank creation, a stamp, and maybe a CD would be in it. But, as it were, this "Millennium Box" was not a time capsule.

It was, just as it suggested, a box of memorabilia from New Years' Eve 1999-2000. It seems so simple.

The contents of the box made me question why I keep the things I keep. For example, in the box was the cork from the champagne I was too young to drink, a flimsy party hat I have no memory of wearing, a party horn that (miraculously) still works, a paper menu from a restaurant (whose food I didn't particularly enjoy), and a noisemaker I found on the sidewalk.

I chose these particular items to commemorate that evening.

I'm sure they meant a lot to me at the time, but now it looks like a bunch of junk I was too lazy to throw away -- and perhaps I'm still too lazy because I put my "Millennium Box" right back on the shelf.

But it wasn't just the "Millennium Box" that had lost it's value. I found plenty of things that just didn't mean that much to me anymore. In a way I feel like deciding that something will just "go down to the basement for a while" is more or less condemming the object to a new life of neglect, which is kind of sad. But, as I grow up, I don't need some things anymore, and others take their places.

So, you see? I had to go through my crap in my room BEFORE college with the hopes of having room for the NEW stuff that would come home with me. But THEN, I couldn't even fit it all in, so I HAD to go to the basement and go through crap THERE and encounter the "Millennium Box" and other similar keepsakes in order to fit the REST of my college stuff down there... it's a never-ending cycle.