So on the last day of November, I went shopping.  It was for a good reason, let me explain.

Thanksgiving weekend (now) is a blissful four day weekend of no plans.  For someone who tends to be introverted, it is almost a dream come true – four days to recharge batteries.  This year, there were projects on my list related to the whole minimalism thing.  I had a stack of old financial papers (bills, bank statements, etc.) that needed to be shredded and a spare room that needed to be organized.  Happy to report, it all got done.  Yay me!

The shredding thing turned out to be a bit cathartic.  At some point last year, I had gone through old papers and threw a bunch into the “to be shredded box”.  Some of those documents went back to 2009 (no kidding, told ya it was a huge stack!) which was a very dark year for me.

I quit a fairly well paying job the end of 2008 because the stress was making me physically sick but also so I could spend more time with my parents who were both ill.  No work = no pay.  It seemed like such a great idea at the time.  I did some part time work for a law firm and was planning on starting my own business but I sank horribly into a deep pit of debt.  I’m still clawing my way out of it, but that’s another story.  Some of the papers I came across were from that very dark time and it felt so incredibly good to shred them into bits.  Now I’ll never have to see them again and can focus on other memories from that time period.

I’m getting to the cookie jar part now.  Next up on the agenda was cleaning up a spare bedroom that is used as a storage area.  Boxes and plastic storage cartons were all over the floor and other bits and pieces of no longer used crap was jumbled on top of the boxes.   Among all this stuff was the cookie jar.

One thing I didn’t do, that I should have, was take a picture of it.  A recent minimalism article suggested taking pictures of things that have sentimental value in order to preserve the memories associated with the object while getting rid of the object itself.  Another suggestion was to actually use or display the objects instead of hiding them in storage.

So the plan was to go through the boxes and other stuff Friday to gather everything up for a trip to Goodwill.   And that brings us to the cookie jar.  It occurred to me how much we attach or associate memories with certain objects.  Some things are just easier to throw or give away than others for whatever reason.  I have been mulling this all weekend.

My dad gave me the cookie jar years ago as a Christmas gift.  It wasn’t particularly cute or pretty and wasn’t what I would have picked out but it was a gift nonetheless.  It was probably one of the first gifts he bought on his own after my parents split up.  Like most men of his generation, he left gift buying up to my mom.  My dad and I were not particularly close by then.  We had a falling out of sorts when I was in high school.  It was a rift that was never mended.

I had the cookie jar on my kitchen counter for a few years in my old house up north and actually used it from time to time.  Then I moved to Florida and my new kitchen had far less counter space.  The cookie jar went to storage but I still couldn’t part with it.  It was like if I let it go, I would be letting go of good memories of my dad.  It’s irrational and one of the reasons we accumulate so much stuff that has no use or value.

I was finally able to let go yesterday and put the cookie jar in the car with the rest of the boxes of stuff to be dropped off.  Perhaps someone else will buy it at Goodwill and start their own memories with it.

After I left Goodwill, I stopped at Lowe’s for the shopping trip – shelving units to organize all those boxes of memories.  It was a weekend of literal and figurative mental and physical housekeeping.  I highly recommend it.