Adventures in Cleaning

   We share a room with each other and our little sister. The three of us all have tendencies to let stuff accumulate, and with all three of us living in one room, it's almost like we feed off each other's bad habits in this regard. As a result, our room is messy far more often than it's clean. It can be quite embarrassing at times, and can make it very difficult to have friends over. We kind of have hermit tendencies anyway - it's not that we don't like being social, it's just that our personalities make it hard for us to be the instigators of planning social events - so the last thing we need is a messy room constantly discouraging us even further from inviting our friends over.

Therefore, this weekend we've been working on what we refer to as a "deep clean," which involves not only dusting, vacuuming, and putting things in their places, but also going through every single one of our belongings and GETTING RID OF STUFF. It's the kind of task that's an interesting insight into our minds. There are always those items which make us ask ourselves, "Why the heck did I keep this useless piece of garbage for so long?" In a similar vein, there are items we still kind of want to keep, but deep down inside our souls, we know they also belong to the family of useless pieces of junk. These things should probably join their brothers and sisters in the trash, but for some crazy reason, that helpful little voice in our minds insists on contributing it's rationale. "What if you need that eventually? What if someday you find yourself raging and cursing because you didn't keep that random scrap of paper with the ramblings of your ten-year-old self?" Or, even worse, there are those items that you've never used, but for some reason you think you will someday. Like, "I've never had any interest in ____, but who knows? Shouldn't I be prepared for any hobby I want to try on a whim?" or "It was a gift!" or "It seems so wasteful to just get rid of it."

Now, we should clarify: we're not hoarders. We'd rather not have large amounts of stuff - it just somehow seems to collect. We genuinely would like to cut down on our personal belongings, free up some closet space, and make the task of moving out someday far less daunting than it is currently.

This brings us to the fundamental question: Are we insane, or do others share our problems? Furthermore, how should we determine which items to actually keep? These aren't hypothetical questions - if you have advice or answers, please share with us! Most of you have more than one way to contact us, and you can always leave a comment here. This weekend room-cleaning venture is our last big project before school starts - yes, we both ended up with weirdly late starts this year - so we'd really like it to be successful.