Creating Myself

Since my last farcical move which took me, my 7 year old son and 10 million little baubles I've collected in 32 years of my life, clear across the country, I have strived to become a minimalist.

I didn't HAVE to drag all that junk with me, but something inside me wouldn't let any of it go. Some were keepsakes passed down from my grandmother and my mother. Others were collections of things that documented my ever-changing interests and hobbies throughout my lifetime. The first thing that crossed my mind was just to declare that I was never moving again and if things didn't work out with my new husband, he would have to clear out and leave me with my stuff.

Nearly nine years, 600 episodes of organizing shows, and 227 articles about clutter reduction (which, true to form, I clipped out and saved in a binder) later, I decided that I would just take a photo of everything and get rid of anything that wasn't necessary or interesting enough to display.

I was about 3 weeks into this "de-cluttering" project when a new idea struck me. I asked one of our three boys to help me take some boxes and put them upstairs in the loft of the shed. He complied after ample whining and "why me's?"
This didn't sit too well with me. After all, for the last three years I have lived in what I have now come to describe as "Frat House conditions." This is an exaggeration, of course, but with three teenage boys at home, it often fits.
Socks are left under the coffee table or between sofa cushion, drinking glasses left in the strangest places and I can't recall now how many game console controllers have crippled me in the middle of the night by mysteriously creeping out into the middle of the living room floor–apparently all on their own.

This new idea is ingenious if I should say so myself. I'm giving up the de-cluttering ghost and I'm going with my true nature. Collect, recycle, save and enjoy because when I'm gone, THEY will have to clean up after me!

That's right. I'm going to save every wine cork, straw wrapper and matchbook commemorating every dinner, wedding and amusement park with the kids. I will buy big plastic containers to keep them in to ensure they will not get destroyed in the next hurricane or flood. I will dust them only when they become a bio-hazard. I will attend craft shows and flea markets and buy stuff just because it has pretty colors or interesting lines. I will create hundreds of little polymer clay creatures and bake little treasures and clues inside of them so that when I no longer walk this earth, it will be the only way for the boys to find my riches. I will keep old coats and outdated dresses and sew small amounts of money into the hem of each of them. I will let the boys know this. I will hide paper money in the thousands of books in my library. I will insist on friends returning books that they borrow so there are even more for the boys to have to search through.

Oh, I'll make a Last Will and Testament and make sure it gets to them upon my earthly departure but the Will shall only harbor clues and hints as to where they can find the real treasures. My husband and I were planning to buy some property and build a new beautiful home, but the boys may want to keep it when we're gone. That might allow them years to go through all the junk we will leave behind. No, instead we will stay in this musty old 1950's tract home with no mortgage so they will want to sell it. But, in order to sell it, they will have to clean it out. I will make sure they have to pick through almost every box and CD case to find clues to the real riches.

Don't take all of this the wrong way. I love each one of those boys with all my heart and I have continued to allow them to live the way they do because they really are good kids and in this day and age, you really have to pick your battles, right? So while we are all here on this earth, we'll be all smiles, hugs and love but when I'm gone, I'll get my revenge and somehow, without ever being told, I think they'll know exactly what I was planning the last fifty years of my life.