“As long as there is one person on earth that remembers you – it isn’t over.” - From the movie “Carrousel” by Oscar Hammerstein

Cabin fever is a real illness brought on by too many months of gray days, ice and snow. Along with the fever come bouts of depression and claustrophobia and a strong urge to toss all my belongings in a dumpster. A clean fresh new outlook is needed.

On one of those gray mornings recently, I was tempted to make another cup of coffee, lie on the couch and read a book but instead I told myself, “Get with it and rearrange this one room, to start with, and you will feel better.”

So, I did it. I put on an old worn tee shirt and jeans and dragged my vacuum out of the closet. The first task was to move the six big plants off the cedar chest and stools and put them out of the way. Next, I moved the cedar chest and the stools and started vacuuming.

I worked for hours —  dusting, vacuuming, washing windows, and moving furniture into new spots. When I was finally finished with the living and dining area, I looked around at a room that appeared roomier and definitely cleaner.

I only had to remove two small pieces of furniture from the room — a small stepstool and a wooden stand with a ceramic horse head on it. They sit in my office for now until I decide whether to give them away or find another place in my apartment for them.

“Amazing,” I said to myself. It’s amazimg how cleaning and rearranging furniture where one lives can bring a sense of peace to the mind. The simple act of removing literal cobwebs and dust from my living space brought an overall sense of wellbeing.

My grandson, Symon, just recently deep cleaned and organized his bedroom and bathroom after months of stepping over debris and clothes on his bedroom floor. He told me when I praised his work, “You know, Grandma, I was really getting depressed and now, since I cleaned my room, I feel good. I go in there and feel happy.”

I have always been one to like a clean, organized and tidy living space. As a child and as a teenager, my room was always clean, my bed made and all my belongings arranged neatly. My two younger sisters’ rooms were a mess. I took after my mother who always had a clean and neat home.

One time, years ago, when my mother and I were on a trip together, she said to me, “You always were the one of my five girls who did things like me.” I took that as a compliment then and still do.

For my spring cleaning, I have made a list of seven major projects I want to work on. Most of the seven will be easy and quick and can be accomplished in several days.

The one item on my list that will be the most time consuming and emotionally draining will be the huge number of papers, photos, letters and years of journals to sort through. I will have to decide what to do with them and that is the hardest part of all.

Don’t misunderstand; they are already organized into notebooks, file boxes, old suitcases and photo boxes in my office closet. Also, on my writing table, I have every piece of personal writing placed in file folders labeled by category: parents, children, spiritual, homesteading, poetry, relationships and so on. I am very organized, to a point.

Those file folders stare at me every day, begging me to take one out and begin to work on editing and rewriting it for my memoir.

I ask myself, “Why don’t I just take all of these old writings to the shred event? Who cares and who will take the time to read all my angst, my reminiscences, and all the stuff I’ve written over the years when I’m gone, anyway?”

I will be 82 years old in July of 2024, and death is my imminent future. No avoiding the fact, and I don’t want to burden my children with sorting through all of these papers when I’m gone.

I have planned to leave the three metal trunks filled with my journals to my granddaughter Ashlynn, and my writings about the Centennial Wagon Train I organized and led will go to my grandson Symon.

I hope they will read them and come to know their grandmother with all her flaws, secrets and strengths.

I am like my mother in the keeping of writings and important papers. I have a suitcase of hers filled with all of the letters I wrote to her over the years and more of her personal writings and important papers she kept.

She also labeled the manila envelopes she kept them in. I enjoy reading all that she has kept; it brings her close to me once again. I can hope that will be the way my family feels when they read my words after I’m gone.

All of these pieces of paper of mine are filled with my words full of emotion, pain, laughter, joy and love. As a writer, words for me are magic and can reveal a soul and inner spirit. Those words over the years reveal who I was, who I was becoming and who I am now. They tell my life journey. I could enter them on my computer but then my handwriting is lost.

I’ve also kept special college papers, the handwritten manuscript of my novel, letters from my mother and other dear ones, notes from favorite classes I taught at the college, and more. So much writing, so much of me poured out on paper.

My words on paper are sacred to me, and it is a most difficult task to think of destroying them. Destroying all those words would be like killing part of me, so I avoid facing that task and fill a closet and my office with the file boxes and notebooks.

I have always criticized hoarders, people who cling to THINGS. Webster’s definition of hoarding: “to accumulate and hide and keep in reserve. To get and store away money, goods, etc.”  Television documentaries show people in homes so filled with THINGS they can barely move inside their homes. Those are the extreme hoarders who mostly suffer from high anxiety issues and mental illness.

Overall, most Americans are hoarders. Advertising has programmed us to buy more than we need or can use and most of us attach sentimental value to too many THINGS. 

My daughter-in-law pays $200 per month for a storage unit to hold all of the THINGS left over after the estate sale of her mother’s belongings. Her mother was a hoarder and lived in a three-story house filled with THINGS — mostly China dolls she had created, at least 500 of them.

She was a doll maker, a quilter, and an artist, and all of those products made by her own hand were as sacred to her as my writings are to me.

I admit I have judged other people’s hoarding unkindly. I have to admit the hoarding of my writings and sentimental papers is no better. No, I don’t fall into the extreme category. People who visit my house would know that I am a fastidious housekeeper and don’t accumulate THINGS.

But, perhaps, by naming my own collection of paper as “hoarding” will be the first step toward being able to deal with the issue. This is the first time I have ever reflected on that reality. Before I judge and criticize others’ collecting or hoarding, I must face my own.

I have a quote tacked on my bulletin board in my office that addresses this very thing. I don’t remember where I got it or who said it but it speaks to my situation.

“When you can name your weakness, you enter your strength. And your healing.”

What will I feel when I complete my to-do list for spring cleaning? Will I feel lighter, happier and more peaceful as I did when I completed the cleaning and rearranging of that one room? I think I will.

Spring cleaning involves not only just my physical living space; it involves the facing and clearing out of buried emotions of the mind and, most importantly, the spirit. There is freedom in the act of relinquishing and letting go. Perhaps when I have finished dealing with my sacred words on paper, I will find true peace in my soul. Perhaps.