Summer Cleaning

Home for my first two work-free weeks of the summer, I decided I should do something more productive than hanging out with my dog. With the confidence of a naively inexperience soldier heading off to the front lines, I tackled the mess that has been growing in my bedroom for roughly 19 years.

I'm not a dirty person. There are no congealing glasses of milk on my windowsills. My problem is that I simply have too much stuff. Opening one of the drawers in my bureau, I found it completely filled with Pokémon figurines. Of course, I just closed it up again—no way I’m getting rid of those. They could be worth money some day, or more importantly, I might be called upon to stop Team Rocket.

I don’t understand how so many happy meal heirlooms are still floating around my room. When I was in seventh grade, an air conditioner cord ignited a pile of paper in my bedroom, effectively reducing all of my Beanie Babies into a melted glob. Really, every preteen should let their past go up in a blaze of glory. Plus all of the other items that made up my junior high existence. Besides the emotional trauma and potential danger, it’s a great way to get rid of unwanted knickknacks in one fell swoop. Who cares if a few priceless childhood memories are incinerated in the process?

So I can’t comprehend why I still have a hammock full of cheerfully neglected stuffed animals in my room to this day. Where were they during the blaze? My policy is that I can only donate them if I forget their names. The problem is that I never forget. I’ll remember Radcliffe the Raccoon until the day I die. So they just watch me smugly with their unblinking eyes, knowing I don’t have the strength to shove them in a garbage bag.

For now, I’m surrounded by piles of junk that used to somehow hold importance in my everyday life. I pulled a hoody with a unicorn rearing across the chest from my closet and had no faint recollection of ever owning it. A Napoleon Dynamite poster, a pirate costume, a vintage suitcase filled with alcohol-themed bandanas. Where did I get these things, and why did I keep them?

So I’m wasting my summer days in my bedroom, wading through the disorganized and illogical waters of my past. Maybe it’ll take another week or so. Then I can start unpacking the bags from my dorm room.