I think the thing that's so exhausting about cleaning my room is that I have to categorize everything. My life is reduced to a hierarchy. I look at the floor and some of it is easy: Credit card applications, old bills, grocery receipts, ATM receipts, candy wrappers all go into the garbage. But eventually you get down to the blood and bones of who you are. You start to resist categorization. You don't know when you became a concert stub from 1997, a Matchbox car with sticky wheels and a swatch of bubble wrap. You can't remember if you ever wrote down your aunt's address from that letter she sent you. You don't know if it's safe to throw away endless papers, papers, papers.
For me, the weight of all my stuff is huge. I don't know what to do with most of it, but some sentimental button in the back of my brain makes me want to keep it. I try to keep it simple. I try to convince myself that I don't need my "Armageddon" ticket stub, even if I DID see it with an ex-boyfriend. I plead with my nostalgia, trying to explain that I just don't have a use for 600 paper clips. I don't need one gray sock. I DON'T NEED ALL THIS STUFF. So why do I want to keep it?
I don't have any answers. I just know that when the THINGS stack too high, I have to do something with them. Something is usually categorizing for a while and then throwing everything else in the closet because I don't want to look at it anymore.
But this time. THIS TIME I even tackled some of the closet. With every cleaning, you shed some of that lost nostalgia. You can throw away a half-scribbled W2 from 1998. You can toss another couple socks. You can get rid of a torn Rolling Stone from 1993. But the output is always less than the input. Inevitably, you keep more than you throw away. But that's just the way it is. Some things will never change.