On Sunday morning,
I decided to declutter.
I stood in the doorway
and looked at my room.
My room looked back.
Something had to be done.
I picked up an old shirt.
“Tattered,” I said.
Into the bin.
I paused.
“Sentimental.”
Out of the bin.
I held it against my chest.
“I wore this when I was fifteen.”
I was twenty-one.
I put it on the chair.
The chair collapsed.
I blamed the chair.
Next, I found a sock.
No matching sock.
I stared at it.
“Perhaps its partner is somewhere.”
I began searching.
Twenty minutes later,
I had found seventeen socks,
none of them matching.
I kept all of them.
“You never know.”
I opened a drawer.
A cable.
I had no idea what it belonged to.
I kept it.
Another cable.
Kept.
Another.
“Important.”
I did not know for what.
I found an old receipt
for a toaster I no longer owned.
I kept it.
For sentimental reasons.
By then, I had both hands in my hair.
I pulled once.
Nothing came out.
At least something was still organised.
I pulled open the wardrobe.
Clothes fell on me.
First a shirt.
Then trousers.
Then a coat.
Then something I could not identify.
I disappeared completely.
From beneath the pile came a muffled voice:
“I am making progress.”
I crawled out.
I picked up a pair of shoes.
“Keep.”
Why?
“Good shoes.”
They had a hole in them.
“Ventilation.”
I slipped them on.
Immediately, I slipped on the floor.
I lay there for a moment,
staring at the ceiling.
“This,” I whispered,
“is why I need to declutter.”
I got up.
I picked up the rubbish bag.
It was empty.
I had thrown nothing away.
I looked around.
The room was worse.
Much worse.
I felt strangely proud.
I had discovered something important:
Decluttering was not about having less.
It was about finding new reasons
to keep everything.
I put the rubbish bag away.
“You never know.”