The impact of owning things really did not occur to me until recently.
As a child I was a pack rat. I would keep everything that I loved. I felt an emotional attachment to items. I would feel terrible if I lost a gift somebody got me. I was almost neurotic about it, to the point where I would force myself to play with a toy I got as a gift, to the point of pretending to myself that I was enjoying it, even if it wasn't my thing. I did not have a very carefree attitude.
As a young adult, I suffered through many moves with way too many possessions. Books were always an issue for me, I would hoard books. At first it was ones I would buy at garage sales or save up for the next book in my favourite series. I read most of them but as time passed, I continued to acquire more books than I read, especially considering I was still getting books from the library and buying books at the store, along with garage sales, and reading less as I got into college and reading more textbooks and articles than fiction. Another thing I would hoard was clothes, though it wasn't too bad as I didn't buy a lot of new clothes. But I hung onto every piece. If something started to wear out, I would just wear it less and less and still keep it. As if it could last forever.
Fast forward to the last year. I became aware of carpet beetle larvae in our house and went on a cleaning spree. The bugs are nasty, but for a bug problem they aren't the worst one to have-- they don't bite humans and although they eat clothes and carpet, they seemed to be only eating the stray cat hairs around the baseboards. I hadn't noticed any damage and we have never gotten bitten. But it is always gross finding out you have bugs in your house.
Around the same time I started reading cleaning blogs and organizing my stuff better and donating many items and actually following the tenet of if you don't use it, you don't keep it.
What a massive change since childhood.
Honestly I'm not a super clean person and so this is really a big thing for me to change. I tend to have a lot of clutter, piles of clothes, and don't dust or vacuum a lot. And I have always had a cat, and now multiple cats. So it's an adventure and a half for me to try to become a neat freak. I'll admit that I spend most of the weekend cleaning. Once I get caught up, though, I believe it will be easier to maintain.
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