Hoarder or Minimalist?

Anywhere I can elaborate? I’m about 50 words short but not sure where to expand.

I have two boxes in my room filled with ticket stubs, pamphlets, brochures, maps, letters and other souvenirs. There’s also a postcard collection, a pencil with a taxi on top of it, a tie-dye wristband, and a jar of sand. The boxes sit on my floor on the corner of my room, barely used. A few bags full of extra souvenirs sits next to them, unable to fit inside either of the boxes. One of the boxes is a small pink suitcase with flowers on it that I used to play with when I was younger. The other one is a cardboard box that we bought blueberries from Michigan in once.

        Occasionally I look through the boxes, reminiscing about the good memories each souvenir reminds me of. Sometimes, my family members will also look through the box with me and we laugh about funny things that the souvenirs remind us of or suddenly remember something we did once that we had totally forgotten about. However, for most of the year the boxes sit in the corner of my room, forgotten.

I save everything: tickets, restaurant cards, cool bags, pretty much anything you can think of. Because everything has a memory attached to it and if I throw something away I’m basically throwing memories away and I can never get them back. A while back, my dad showed me his box of memories and I was inspired to start keeping one as well. Ever since then, I hang on to anything that could have sentimental value.              

And it’s not just ticket stubs and brochures that I keep. I hang on to old childhood toys that I never use. They sit unused and covered in dust in my closet or my basement but I can’t bring myself to throw them away. If I throw my old toys away I feel like I’m getting rid of part of my childhood and without my old toys I will never be able to remember what my childhood was like. I become attached to objects that I haven’t used for years.

            About a year ago I was cleaning my room and realized that I had built up quite and accumulation of clutter and random things that I did not need anymore. For example, my snowglobe collection was getting pretty dusty and one of the snowglobes had leaked and left a gross stain on my shelf. Yet instead of getting rid of the snowglobes, I packed them all in a box and put them in my closet. It would have been so easy to just get rid of them because I never use them anymore and would definitely not miss them if they were gone. I just could not bring myself to throw them away. The reason I was cleaning my room was that I had wanted to redo my room. I had just visited a friend who had redone her whole room. It had a whole color scheme and cute plants were hanging around the room. I had really wanted to do something like this to my room but unfortunately the clutter was getting in the way.

            I come up with excuses for myself about why I won’t throw something away. For example, maybe I’ll give this stuff to my kids one day. Or I’m sure this will be useful one day, just not now. Or it can’t hurt to put this in the basement for now and then I’ll throw it out when I leave for college. In the end everything ends up collecting dust but I’m sure one day I’ll be glad that I kept everything.