Give it all away

Does anyone else get those feelings? You know, those feelings that you just need to give everything you own away? I get these feelings often. I think how much simpler life would be if I could rid myself of all of my material possessions and live out of a backpack. Then I realize I'm very practical and have been called a boy scout with my preparedness for any situation. I pride myself on this. But I guess I could carry band-aids around with me and still have less stuff in general.

Whenever I get those feelings, I start with clothes. I look through everything I own but then I get sentimental. "Oh, that shirt looks really good on me," or "I will use that one day." But will I really? Do I need that many shirts and pairs of sweatpants? I love the smell of clean laundry so wouldn't washing a limited amount of clothes more often please my nose? I also love buying things. I think it's American. But I'm cheap. Or I get donations from my sister and they're always the clothes I wear the most often.

I have a little crawl space attached to my room that's filled with boxes. Boxes of memories. Boxes of baby stuff (yeah, I still have every Congratulations! card from when I was born and a few random momentos of my infancy.) Also there's a box of scrapbooks from when I was about 13. Then I have a box full of "high school memories" aka my high school diploma and graduation cap, photo albums, cross country spikes, etc. Then my college box has nearly every note I've ever taken. I always think "Oh, I'll use this again in the future!" But will I really? Shouldn't I just recycle them and look up the information online if I really need it? I'm far too sentimental to get rid of everything, even though I REALLY want to.

Perhaps one of these days I'll get around to getting rid of it all. I really want to now that I've been writing about it. I should do something else right now with my time, though. But getting rid of everything would simplify life and make room for more memories. It would also make moving way easier.

Go ahead, take everything from me.