Look at it reflecting off the river!
So anyway, living in this unairconiditioned box, in combination with essentially living for an additional seven weeks out of the suitcase I packed for two weeks, has got me thinking a lot about things I need and things I don't. Apparently I can get by without air conditioning. I guess I can also get by without solid nights of sleep (at least so far). Yes, I've been wearing the same six shirts for the last month and a half. And yes, the only three pairs of pants I've had to wear basically since I left for Spain in August really do need replacing now; they get worn out a lot faster when you have less options. And not a day has gone by that I have not rued sending my other pair of shorts home, thinking, "I don't need two pairs of shorts for two weeks in Europe." My God I need to buy another pair of shorts. But apparently I don't need a lot of the clothes I know I've got sitting in drawers at home. And I don't know what all that stuff in my desk is that I haven't really seen since last summer, but I hope that when I get home I will remember I got by without it for a year and probably don't need it anymore.
I'm sure some of this attitude comes from my mom, the home organizer. And some of it comes from being a type-A neat freak (thanks for that, too, Mom), but I've still always had a lot of stuff. It's just been well-organized stuff. And now I don't want so much of it. Some things have been a little complicated since I ended up with an unexpected six weeks in New York, but mostly things are a lot simpler with only a carry on's worth of belongings. Now, don't get too excited Mom, I think part of why I'm so comfortable in this room I'm living in is because it has two bookcases packed to the gills with books, and though I go through my collection once or twice a year and always find a couple things to toss, we all know I have a harder time parting with books than with anything else.
Do you know how weird it is to be reading library copies of Harry Potter books? This may be a first.
I really am trying to think of what all the stuff in my very full room is. I have fifteen years of dance costumes in my closet, most of which I'm going to get rid of. I'm trying to sell my American Girl dolls that I have held onto for ten years even though I only ever wanted one (which I bought myself) so that I could do its hair. I finally decided to try to sell my flute that I played in junior high and then only a handful of times in the seven years since. Before I started college I condensed all my grade school crap into a single cardboard box.
There is a nagging feeling growing inside me that a lot of the random things cluttering my room are bits of my collection of Harry Potter memorabilia, which I can say from 800 miles away I won't part with. I mean, my eighteen Harry Potter books alone (not counting Tales of Beedle the Bard or Quidditch Through the Ages/Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them) take up plenty of space. And space, if you didn't know, is something of a scorching commodity in New York. It's a hotter than this weather we've been having, and that's saying something.
So, we've established Potter is important. My photos and scrapbooks are important. Minimal clothing is important. The books stay. But eventually I've got to haul all this stuff across half the country, so most of the rest of it has got to go. (I can already feel this whole thing coming back to haunt me in a few weeks when I get home.)
Join me, friends! You know you've got a drawer where you throw the junk you don't know what to do with and plan to go through "at some point." Which is never. Believe it or not, I have one of those drawers. I do. And the only thing I can promise you is in it is some Harry Potter calendars from 2002. (I'm not kidding.) Don't think of it as summer cleaning, think of it as lightening up your life! Even in Europe I got tired of lugging the suitcase around. I think I wore all but two things that I had packed, and yet I still didn't want to be dragging around as much stuff as I had. So I definitely want to get rid of the excess in my life before I have to pack it into the back of an SUV and probably inevitably haul it up a narrow staircase while my mom reminds me this is the fourth time she's helped me move into a New York apartment.
And I promise you don't need all those school papers you're keeping. Just stop it. It's taking up so much space, and it's utterly useless. I gave my brother my calculus notes years ago and threw the rest away, with the exception of things I wrote. And don't keep those readings you never read that you think you will later because you want to be well-read and intellectual. Maybe that was just something I did but we'll pretend it's not. You haven't read them yet. You're not going to. And if it was given to you to read in a class, I would bet you could find it in a book or maybe even on the internet if you're suddenly possessed with the urge to read The Prince or something.
I care about skylines and pink heavens at five am and having a comfortable bed and being surrounded by books. And I care way more about my family and friends than anything. And, okay, I take an unreasonable amount of pride in the absurdity of my collection of utterly useless Harry Potter things. But part of what studying abroad did, and graduating did, and living on my own with all this free time has done, is help me figure out who I am, at least for now, and I am not all that stuff. Because I've been me for the last ten months without it. Out with the old. In with (less) new.
And the best thing about that sky? It takes up all the space in the world, but no space at all in my room. :)
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