I’ve been in declutter mode for the past Too Many Years to count so my house is down to mostly what I use and enjoy (except for one big closet), although I’m really interested in that “extreme minimalism” concept.

I think the weirdest thing I had was a large (clean) Hefty-type garbage bag full of shoulder pads that I had removed from every garment I owned. I actually sold it on Ebay to a fiber artist who used them to make fabric murals; I asked her to send me a photo of her finished work, but she never did.

LOTS of notes from friends were saved needlessly.

For some stupid reason, I saved hair twice. It’s a pretty disgusting find.

I saved a hair wrap (it was all the rage at the beach that summer) that I clipped from my long hair. (A hair wrap was a thin braid wrapped tightly with several colors of floss and secured with beads).

I also saved the clippings from a hair cut. I went from having too-long hair to long hair. Not sure why I thought I’d need the memento.

Gross.

However, there was the time I stayed in a guest house in Hay on Wye; the owner’s aunt had recently passed over. When clearing less public areas of the house, they found many items sorted in boxes which were labelled in copperplate handwriting. Including: “Decent Sized Pieces of String” and “Pieces of String too Bl***y Short to be Any Use at All”.

I have a book with one friends, another book with anothers and a box full of notes from the other friend.

I also have a suitcase full of old journals from high school, late primary school.

I also have a memory box which has trinkets and things I like to remember.

And lastly a box full of cards, xmas, bday, etc and they go all the way back to my 1st bday i think. (I am 20) and it is nice coz one has my mums writing in it and I cannot chuck that coz I havent seen her since I was five or so.

When they lifted up the box spring, it was worse than I expected! Along two walls there was a small mountain of stuff, most of it newspapers, magazines, and food packaging, but also 12 books (including 2 that the library has already billed me for!) and 2 CD’s still in the bag from the store. Very embarrassing. I’ve sworn that in my new apartment, even though it’s a studio, the bed won’t be against the wall.

When human cloning comes to the consumer level, I will be the first on my block to have my own Conan O’Brien clone…which would be a whole new level of odd clutter.

When I last moved I found a cassette of a film-school project I had done a number of years ago with my friends and the voice of one of my friends was on it. Since he had died a few years after we graduated, I was amazed that I had his voice in my stuff. I saved that.

- an owl pellet in a Ziploc bag (pretty much an owl hairball; contains all of the inedible part of the owl’s last mousy meal, including a full skeleton and fur; taken to school once for show and tell)

- a piece of petrified wood covered in crystals (bought off a rockhound)

- a phone shaped like the replica of a cat (why did I ever think this was cool?)

- a bullwhip (from my younger Indiana Jones days)

- a set of maracas (from Panama…I think these got reboxed…)

They are ugly, gaudy, wastes of space, zerotaskers (no one smokes here) and yet I find something charming about their ugliness.

I only have 3 or 4 though and they are on a shelf collecting dust. They used to hold keys but I think I’ll hang on to them.

Dana

In high school I always took the box from my back-to-school shoes and put it in a corner of my room to hold all of the notes we passed all year. We had 4 classes and spent everyone of them writing notes and reading the notes that everyone else had written to us during the last class. All year. I got at least 4 or 5 notes 2 or 3 times a day. It was so bad that my back pockets were always wearing out from holding them all. And they are all labeled by grade and in my moms attic. I tossed all of my journals from this time, so I am keeping these notes forever.

Now this is where the younger generation has us beat. They don’t waste paper and create all that clutter with notes. All they have to do now is reach inside their backpacks and send a text to their friend across the room.

Oh hell, I just still like Baby, Don’t Forget My Number…