Yesterday I threw away a good portion of my childhood. And it felt great. It was needlessly taking up space I did not have. And it’s not like I was using it for anything anyway.

As mentioned previously, I’ve been cleaning like a nutter & have very nearly realised my long-time goal of having nothing extraneous in my hovel. I now have two boxes of papers that need sorting through. And that’s it.

Yesterday was the top of the second room closet–the room we call the Room of Requirement. It had huge boxes I’d moved in with five years ago and had never opened. In several of them were dance costumes from the years I took ballet, tap and jazz. I had moved those big boxes three times since moving out of my parents’ house. Why? Why was I carting around these completely useless bits of fabric?

That’s when I started getting philosophical about it. It became a metaphor for life–you carry around big boxes of things to no good purpose when you could be using that room for something useful.

When you start thinking anything you’re doing is a metaphor for life it’s time to stop doing whatever it is you’re doing.

[Reposted from a now-defunct blog. Original post date: 3 September 2007]