Ruminations on Uncluttering

Ruminations on Uncluttering

Today, unlike any other days, I was seized with a strong urge to clean. Not the usual cleaning I do, like dusting off the book shelf or keeping the floor free of hair follicles but I actually dealt with the task I’ve been putting off in a secluded, unattended corner of my brain. Today, I cleared out my closet, not to a zilch but of things I know I find no use for anymore. For a small piece of furniture that held tons of clothes (which God knows I never got to wear on a country with a schizophrenic weather) and other sorts of whatnots, my closet is probably the furniture (next to my book shelf) which held things the most. 

I was relentless to the 2 garbage bags that went into the trash bin today that held most of my clothes since 2007 or even earlier than that. The thing about wardrobe is that it is kind of hard to let go of them. Why? Aside from the fact that a great deal of money was involved, these pieces of clothing also held memories or a great deal of emotional significance. I owned a very pink shirt with a print that screams: TOUGH GUYS WEAR PINK which attracted a considerable attention along with the longish hair that I used to sport way back in college (some image I was trying to project, huh?), another one reads I HEART CAMBODIA, a hard evidence of the trip I took to catch the dawn at the Angkor Watt and the time I spent soul-searching in Tuol Sleng, there were also dress shirts I wore on the very first months of working in a school that demands it’s employees to dress up  like a Real Estate Agent. And I must not forget the shirt I bought during a bad break up or the one so and so once gave me. Clothing, if anything, held a fine string between me and my travels and people. I have often feared that letting go of them would mean letting go of the very feelings they represented, the significance they once held. But getting old teaches you so much, having a hardened heart for clearing out ones closet is one of them. I will never be the guy who would settle for 2 pairs of jeans and 10 pieces of shirts, nay, but I won’t also be the guy that owns a collection of clothes that speaks of every passing fad. On the brink of turning 29, I opt for a minimalistic outlook, a single closet with just the right number of shirts to wear on a normal equatorial weather and to look good on a candle-lit dinner. It was a hard, painful process putting each piece of shirt or jeans inside the garbage bag. But those shirts whose accumulated the stink of the past has taken up every empty space in there and I know that, along with the bad, unwanted memories, they had to go. 

 A reflection: Letting go. It took me till I am this old to own a heart that allows an ancient ability to let go and pay no heed to all those aching left over crumbs of yester-years for I know I do not live for them. I do not live for a past-tense that prevents me to a future-perfect kind of life. 

April 09, 2012