Donate Pile

I've a habit of hanging onto things way past their useful life. 

Sometimes, when I'm restocking laundry in an over flowing cabinet or laser-gazing into one to find something/anything to wear, I come across things that I should do away with. 

Like an old jumper, with visible signs of wear and tear; rips at the side seams where the obnoxious multi paged booklet of a label used to be located. 

White shirts with copper oxidation stains, i.e., sitting folded in the same spot for too long because I chickened out of wearing it due to fear of getting stains on it. Oh, the irony! 

Pants that I absolutely keep gaslighting myself into believing that one day I'd fit into like a dream, that day never arriving. 

Skirts and dresses that sit at the intersection of the venn diagram with the trifecta categories -

A. outfits for warm summer days

B. outfits that require shaving/waxing, 

C. outfits that require girly dress-me-up events. 

Jackets and beanies I pick up, every year, during black Friday sales, because I convinced myself that living anywhere in the northern hemisphere requires weather preparedness, even if that location is the sunny pacific coast that never dips below 16 degrees, even at its worst. 

Every year, around Diwali, the Marie Kondo in me comes out of hibernation, determined to do away with things that don't "spark" joy anymore. I walk up to my closet, pick out that one jacket, sweater, pant, hat/whatever item I know I've not worn in forever. And right as I'm about to make my first deposit into the freshly created "Donate" pile, I convince myself that I can upcycle it. That one day, motivation will hit and I'll Diy the shit out of it. Like convert a trench coat to a crop jacket, or make a dress out of my scarfs. Even if this hypothetical project runway sitch requires me to miraculously master sewing skills out of thin air. 

Similar to my 10 inch x 10 inch, wannabe Carrie Bradshaw closet's miniaturized drawer situation is my situation with art supplies. In the event of a sudden art-ocalypse, I'm the first one you should pick to join your team. Stationery such as crayons and paints of all kinds from the beginning of my coloring journey (yeah, three decades old, go figure!), all types of needles, yarns, threads, glues, tapes, fabrics, and paper. Because tomorrow may require me to turn into a crochet expert; it may! You can't ever be too prepared. 

At this point, you may think, oh that's a classic hoarder. But I disagree. I have used these for at least one project and I've a trail of completed and abandoned ones lying around the house. With all the upcycled furniture and gadgets picked up from the recycling room of the apartment complex or from Facebook marketplace's Free finds groups. 

I wish this behavior extended to clothes or hobbies only, but it's ambivalent. Apparently I've always been like this. My parents narrate instances of me, squirreling away my favorite foods for days/weeks because I was afraid it'd be over. So they'd get me a pastry and I would prolong my consumption over the entire week, one spoon a day. I have wept like a mourning widow when we had to immerse an Idol that I'd grown up with - hugging it while bursting into sobs as it was taken and sent offshore.

Perhaps one might even say these tendencies are hereditary, if you knew of my grandma's caching tendencies. After she passed, my dad and his siblings found her emergency fund, neatly stashed across her 12x12 room - between notebooks, inside photo frames, below the cover/ lining of drawers and bedding,... You get the gist.

My caches, today, are slightly harder to find.

There's the hometown weather still saved on my phone, years after I have stopped living there. 

Restaurants bookmarked in cities I don't know when I'll visit again. 

Instruments - ghungroos, keyboard, guitar - that I haven't touched in years but refuse to admit I've quit. 

Landline numbers I haven't dialled since the advent of smart phones sitting in my contacts, attached to birthdays I don't need reminding of. 

Conversations I haven't opened in months but won't delete. 

People whose patterns I can predict with greater accuracy than SoCal weather;  their seams ripping in the same place more times than I care to count, and whom I still somehow return to the shelf, thinking All good. 

All this is not to say, I never do away with things. The pile of Goodwill tax receipts, sitting atop my desk organized by year, tells a different story. 

Every Diwali, I get a little better at filling the Donate pile.

The pants, though.

Might fit next year.