Adventures in Spring Cleaning: The Cleaning Games We Play – Part 2

To celebrate the arrival of spring, I thought I’d run some excerpts about the endless de-cluttering process from my memoir, Picking Dandelions, a quirky reflection on ongoing personal growth. Read Part 1.

Adventures in Spring Cleaning: The Cleaning Games We Play – Part 2

Other items are hard to part with because of their place in my memory. My high school basketball team warm-ups might make sense to keep—you know, in case I join a community basketball team that just happens to be called the Summerfield Bulldogs—but why keep the reversible mesh tank tops we wore in practice? Shirts designed purely to absorb sweat are better left, along with the odor, in previous decades.

The importance of items like this to my memory is exaggerated, anyway. Even if I never saw another practice jersey as long as I lived, I would never forget all the “suicide” drills I ran all those years ago.

I throw the mesh jerseys into a donation box with some satisfaction. I am getting stronger by the minute. I resolve to be ruthless and not to keep anything stupid. This progress must continue.

Right after this resolution I uncover a squishy, plastic microphone that squeaks. This is emphatically not part of the stupid category, since my dog Wrigley’s lip synching just wouldn’t be the same without it. After that comes a half-destroyed tennis ball, a mangled rope, and a supposedly “life-like” squirrel developed to train hunting dogs, which Wrigley lugs around happily as if it his mascot.

I suddenly realize that my dog has more toys than most children in the third world , which makes me feel like I am one of those clueless people standing at the foot of the cross. I say a quick prayer for Wrig’s thirty-four toys. Father, forgive me, I have no idea what I am doing.

As I discover possessions I never meant to keep, I also find flaws that I’ve allowed to creep into my soul.

I never meant, for instance, to buy the idea that my identity is tied to my possessions. But while I was cleaning, I found it under my bed and on my shelves.

And I had thought I’d long-since pitched certain fears—like the fear that if I throw away certain cosmetic products, I won’t be quite as beautiful—but it turned out some of them were still hidden away in the couch cushions of my life as well.

Weeding through things starts to feel like a purge, a spring cleaning for my soul.

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