“Live simply” they say, “less is more,” “less clutter, less stress.” There’s truth in these cliches and I know it. Too much “stuff” makes my anxiety soar. And though it may not occupy every square inch of our living environment, it’s there. Under beds, in closets, behind the selectively closed door of the basement.

It’s a new year, I’m going to blaze through this house and get rid of the extra dust collectors, the things we don’t use. I make the usual “donate” and “trash” piles. I recruit my son to help, we start in his room. He starts rummaging through his rock and fossil collections. He carefully inspects each formation and announces its importance, the defining characteristics that set it apart from the others and make it special. To me, its a pile of rocks. And how many Petoskey stones, horn corals and Crinoids does one need, I ask myself? In this house, it’s a dumb question. I leave him to assess his own belongings and I go for the closet. The closet that has housed the majority of his art projects, report cards and homework assignments that took an act of God to complete. I feel a lump in my throat as I retrieve “Annie” the dinosaur that went everywhere with us for years. I set the stuffed Stegosaurus aside and start tossing the broken crayons, dried out markers and random puzzle pieces into the trash pile. The sentimental findings are too much so I relocate into the kitchen. Surely no items carrying any sentimental value will be found in there.

I don’t need multiple spatulas and duplicates of various kitchen utensils, I don’t. I easily toss them into the “donate” pile. Identifying kitchen towels that have achieved rag status is easy. Nothing emotionally difficult in here, I can purge this room ’til my heart’s content. Or maybe until I open the cupboard that contains the pink and white fish-shaped melamine serving plate. The one that I took out to all of the backyard campfires over the years. Ohhh, on it I would carefully arrange all the fixings for S’mores to treat the neighborhood kids, friends, family. If I get rid of that, I’m throwing away proof of that precious memory.

I find myself looking through CD’s. This will be a piece of cake. Who even listens to compact discs anymore? One by one, I toss them into the donate pile. Until I get to the John Hiatt CD case, with the Interlochen concert ticket stub stuffed inside the cracked case. My mind flashes back nearly 2 decades. I remember the details of that trip. Me belting out “Buffalo River Home” there and back so many times Norb was ready to leave me on the side of the road. That one has to stay, along with Gordon Lightfoot and Eric Clapton’s Greatest Hits. Too many memories attached to those.

I attempt to tackle one last nook of this house today. My bedroom closet. It’s pretty organized, being I tackled it not long ago. I start sorting through the purses and stop cold when I spot the Madras plaid handbag with the ant pattern. A random ant here, a random ant there. I bought the designer purse many years ago when Dan was a little boy and had an obsession with ants. I carried that purse proudly and oh how he loved it. That one stays in the purse bin. It has to.

As I reflect through my findings, I realize my attachment is to the memories and not necessarily the objects themself. It feels like parting with these things is parting with periods of time I will never get back. So I dust them off and put them back in their respective places. Because while I want a tidy home, I also want one with meaning, with scattered bits of nostalgia, where I can easily spot something that makes me say, “hey…..remember when???”

I holler for Dan to grab the clear containers for the rocks. We organize them as best we can, not parting with a single one. We dust them off and head for town. I grab my John Hiatt CD. I sing “Buffalo River Home” and my reflective, sappy mind is content.