Throwing Away

I need to start throwing away things because there are just too much stuff. I actually made a rule in 2019 that if I buy one item, I will make sure to throw away one item. Of course this is a rule that has no teeth and no claw to help me adjust my behavior. It ends up that I have bought many things but thrown away very little for the last two years, and all the years before. Now I made a serious vow to clean up. My feat is probably not as laudable as Hercules’ achievement on King Augeas’ stables or an overworked maid in an Eastern scholar’s home with rooms brimming with books. Still, I do things not for the acknowledgement but for the simplicity of life. Here is a list of things I swear I am going to throw away. If I wake up tomorrow and see them not in the garbage, I will curse myself or starve myself or punish myself by reading “Infinite Jest”, which for several years, I can only manage fifty pages or so.

I don’t admit that I am a hoarder. If you accuse me of being one, I will claim that I don’t have one hundred cats crawling and mating all over my place. Or I will point out that I did throw away something regularly. An alcoholic will never admit he is an alcoholic, and a lunatics will never admit he is insane.

Things I bought but only used once: two electric fans; two bottles of peroxide; two swords (one plastic one steel); almost a dozen room fragrance holder; exercise ropes in different color and shapes; page clips or bookmarks, which is the only thing that attracts me to Barnes & Noble ever since the arrival of Kindle; flat sheets in different colors, textures, thread counts; four blankets that I hardly use; about 10 bottles of spices that I never use.

Clothes and accessories I bought but only wore once: Sleepwear and scarves are the most overflowing items. I have a very bad habit of buying useless things marked “on sale”. Why? I’ve told myself again and again to get rid of this habit, only to see myself plunging into another sale and purchasing something regrettable again. Don’t I ever learn? I am probably the example of human being who never improves, never learns, especially when human behavior is concerned. I only know I need to learn and improve theoretically, but in practice I’m just the old lazy me. Probably my schooling is to blame. I only learn when I am forced, after many years of training pretending to be an obedient nice girl. Whenever the outside pressure is not there, I stop learning. The moral of the story: Schooling can be rather damaging to a person’s psyche.

Books I bought but haven’t read yet or read very little: The list of such books is long and ever extending. I think I am only buying books to make me feel that I am learning. The facade of a reading woman. That’s important for me. I used to try to finish the books I bought, but now I stop pretending. I can’t finish. Well, the world is littered with things unfinished. We all have unfinished work, unfinished reading, unfinished writing, unfinished love affair, unfinished dinner.