from the pen of icarus blake

Bloganuary writing prompt

Where can you reduce clutter in your life?

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I am eclectic by nature.  My habit of picking things up off the ground, of taking any plant clipping offered to me, leads to a house full of curios.  However, not all of those collected objects stay very long.

Twice a year, I get an itch that says its too much.  This urge to delete everything I am and reinvent myself from the ground up, to boil myself and everything I own down to a specific set of themes and aesthetics.  It happens in cycle, usually when I switch my clothes from summer to winter and vise-versa.  In going through the clothing I haven’t seen in over six months, I see the changes.  I produce shirts I’d never wear today, in colors I can’t believe I’d try.  I find things that I saved for no apparent reason tossed into the box.  Socks with holes in them, thrifted threadbare sweaters, the most garish hawaiian shirt you’ve ever seen.  

These seasonal clothes aren’t protected by daily wear, subjected to the daily ins and outs of needle and thread, of bonding and custom repair.  And so, in going through them, I trigger something within myself that says “get rid of it”.  And I do.  Twice a year, I go through everything I own and end up with boxes to take to the local thrift, old bones to rebury on the side of the creek, craft supplies to give away.  Things I wanted to try, but never ended up doing.  Things I tested, but didn’t end up liking.  Books upon books upon books that I see no point in keeping in the library I share with my partner — unlike him, I prefer to read physical books and so my library has some misses.  He’s smart: he reads on Kindle and only buys a physical copy for our library if he likes it enough to make me read it.

So here I am, each year at the turn of the seasons, sitting on my bedroom floor and testing pens for ink and quality.  What can I give away?  Am I really going to use this in the next year?  Is this sentimental object truly worth keeping?  Can I use these things in some way, and will I?  A constant cycle of questions, a remaking of the self in the living and dying of plant life.  What will remain on my windowsill come spring?  On my desk?  In my closet?  The new moon only knows.