The Hard Lesson of Letting Go

I have a bad habit of not being able to throw away things. I keep shopping bags (both plastic and paper), chocolate boxes, shoe boxes, gift wrappers, fabric scraps, broken toys and accessories - anything that I thought could be 'useful' for my never-ending DIY ideas (which I never do). My mom used to call me scavenger because I collect all kinds of junks in my room and that is true.

I don't know why, but I just hate throwing away things - I hate letting go. Every time my mom asked me to throw away leftover foods (even stale ones), I always decline and ask someone else to do it for me because I don't have the heart to do it. I keep collecting junks, thinking that one day I would use it for one of my projects (never happens). So, my room is full of junks - literally.

A corner where I keep all sorts of unused materials and tools from my DIY projects from years ago and all sorts of junks.

An old cupboard where I keep everything from my childhood, primary school, secondary school, university, and literally EVERYTHING (read: junks).

Another corner of my room where I throw my bags, old and unused accessories, fabric scraps, shopping bags, etc.

My bedside table where I pile old CDs, DVDs, graduation photos, thesis, various notes, hair curler, broken and unused pens, etc.

My dressing table where I keep all sorts of toiletries, cosmetics, accessories, and so on. And you'll never know what's inside the drawers: old letters, old diaries, old cellphones+chargers, accessories, half-done DIY accessories, unsolved mysteries, and everything else you could imagine.

So, those were the hot spots of my super unorganized room. Naked and uncensored. I forgot when the last time I tidied up my room properly. I think it's been years, 3 years at least. So, every time my friends apologize of how messy their room was when I visit, I always laughed and told them that my room was waaayyy messier. But they would not believe.

Funny thing about me is, I love organization. But I hate organizing things; too lazy to do it. I think it's due to the fact that I'm a huge procrastinator. When it comes to tidying up my room, I would always say "I'll do it later." But then, later becomes tomorrow, tomorrow becomes next week, next week becomes next month, and so on. And finally I have not tidied it for more than 3 years.

The happy news is, I finally tidied up my room. One Saturday morning after I've decided to do a room makeover, I finally got started. I really had to drag myself to do it. But I finally tidied up the "DIY corner", my cupboard and the drawers of my dressing table, and then throw away 90% of the stuffs. Yeah, apparently, 90% of what I stored in my room are junk.

Compressed junks from my room - and that is not all.

So I spent all day long from morning till afternoon tidying up half of my room and still that is not all. That day, I learnt to let go a lot of things. I had to let go my childhood toys and favorite accessories, notes from the first years of university, old writings from high school, "love letters" from my aunty from year 1999, and so on. Some things I will donate to the orphanage, some things I donated to my younger cousin, some things I gave to my friend who loves DIY too, and most of the things I gave to the real scavenger.

Some things I found generated rush of memories: both happy and sad. And at the end of the day, letting go feels good and apparently it was not that hard. I just had to learn not to be too sentimental about it. And hopefully, I would find it easier to completely let go bad habits and unworthy people from the past, too. :)