shredding

There is something truly satisfying about standing in front of the shredder and destroying a year and a half of unused checks from three different bank accounts. I'm purging my life of stuff that is taking up space, and I am protecting myself against identity theft and fraud, and also the shredder makes an incredibly satisfying hum.



On the subject of stuff that takes up space. I've been feeling slightly oppressed by my connections to the material world recently. I am feeling held back by my books, my movies, my furniture. I wish I could just walk away from about 95% of it, and I suppose I could, but I know that there is some of it I would inevitably miss if I did so. I am trying to be a bit firmer about getting rid of stuff when I bring new stuff into my life, about getting rid of clothes that I really haven't worn in a long time. I'm working on giving away the books I am not actually going to read again, or that I don't think I will want to share with someone special at some point in the future. Yet I am haunted by the sense of "But what if...." when I get rid of things... especially books.



I think that some of my problems with my stuff right now stem from the fact that when I moved I brought a two bedroom apartment's worth of possessions and have, for the most part, tried to make most of it go into a single bedroom (of course the common area furniture remains in common areas). I don't have an unreasonable amount of stuff, I'm simply trying to make it fit into an unreasonable space. Does that really mean I need to get rid of 4 of my 5 copies of Ender's Game? Probably. But I don't necessarily have to get rid of Where the Wild Things Are, or the candles I brought from Denver. I just need to be a little bit more strategic about how I store everything. Which leads me to how I came home last night and found that half of the books I had artfully arranged on the upper sill of my windows had come crashing to the ground at some point during the day yesterday. I have a hard enough time keeping my room in some semblance of neatness without my room actively working against me.



Argh.