Spring cleaning the past

Today is the first of November, 2023. Today is Day 26 of the Israeli-Hamas war/conflict/aggression. I do not know which words to use; they are all negative and horrifying. I cry almost every time I watch a post about Gaza. It is an ongoing horror. I do not know when it will end. But what is important is that this is a point of no return for those who are on the fence in terms of their commitment to this cause, their spirituality, their iman. But this is not a post about Gaza. Maybe one day I will delve deeper into it. At the moment, I, like millions of others, can only – helplessly – watch the genocide unfolds in a little strip of land in the Middle East. All I can give is my du’a, my prayers. And what little donation I can give to ease their suffering.

Like I said, this is not a post about Gaza. I came back on WordPress after two years, yes TWO WHOLE YEARS, to start documenting my LATEST spring cleaning process. I have done so many spring cleanings over the years, especially since I got married over ten years ago, living in a tiny shoebox which cannot really fit the stuff of two people who had lead separate lives in separate places for 30+ years.

In 2021, I wrote that we had to move out of our rented accommodation in suburbia. When I wrote that post, I did not know where we would move to. There were tonnes of packing to do, and I also was baking. We actually put a deposit on a place perhaps a month before we moved? Or maybe a month and a half. Because I remember we had already paid rent for December 2021 but we were still living in suburbia because we were still packing.

Where did we move to? Of course I cannot say exactly where, but it is a place that I had wanted to live in a long time ago. It is quite ironic, if I think about it. About 15 years ago maybe I went on around this picturesque urban village and I thought, oh it would be quite nice to live here one day. I did not imagine that we would move here, but here we are. Here is what I call The Flat. It is a small walk-up with three rooms. It is very small, and when we first moved, our boxes and stuff took up 80% of the flat. We had only this tiny little space to stretch ourselves, to sleep and pray. But Alhamdulillah, it became a habitable space and we had one bedroom, one office for me and one storage room. Unfortunately, there was no space for my husband to set up his workspace but his partner managed to find a place to rent in the area for them to work in. It is strange though not seeing each other at all hours of the day since he would sometimes sleep over at the studio because he needs to work with his keyboards etc and there is no space here as I also bake. Fast forward to 2023, I have converted my home office into a baking studio and I do my writing in the living room. Moushka, my cat, loves the baking studio, and when I am not baking, she would spend hours sleeping on the oven near the window.

So the past month and a half, I have been doing some extreme spring cleaning. I have this feeling that we will be moving again by 2024 and I did not want to go through another extremely exhausting experience like the last move. And so I was determined to trim down our, specifically my possessions, so that there would not be too many stuff to organise. I had already months ago, put most of my books in boxes (these RM4.90 IKEA boxes) and plan to read, review, keep or giveaway/sell them. So that’s done. AND then, I tackled my husband’s boxes. He had actually transferred most of his stuff to his studio, but I wanted to send ALL of his boxes there because I want to have breathing space everywhere in the house, including the store room, and no have boxes and paper bags filled with junk falling on top of me. And so that was another decluttering exercise, which caused me at times to almost vomit with exhaustion. I got quite annoyed at times when I discovered what my husband was hoarding, YES “hoarding” … old shoelaces, bottle caps, bits of plastic ties, etc … I’m thinking does he think he’s a Magpie? Actually my husband thinks he’s sort of like MacGyver and bits of scraps can be re-used in an emergency or something, and yes … there have been times when he was proven right. BUT I need space to breath more than I need an extra plastic tie or old shoelace. And so I trimmed his stuff, well, I started to … but it was such a hassle having to send him photos of what to keep and throw, that finally, I organised his boxes the best I can and got him to cart it off to his studio.

So, after that was done, I tackled the kitchen balcony because I planned to plant some edible plants including ulam-ulaman, just like I did before at the shoebox. One reason is to get healthy, and the other is to reduce expenses. And I also sorted out the front of the house area, so that it is easier to clean.

So, all in all, it was a job well done and I think it also motivated my husband to try and sort out his stuff.

And now, I am on the midst of cleaning up my photo archive on Gmail. I have so many photos taken over the past decade that I had reached the 15GB quota and this is one reason for cleaning up my email because I cannot receive any more emails. To tell you the truth, I have several emails, and some are unused, so yes, sorting them out too.

This year, I turned fifty, and I told myself that I really, really, really cannot afford to bring dumb junk from the past into my post fifty life. I want to start fresh, be lighthearted not just in spirit but also feel light, and not bogged down by physical stuff that I have not used for years.

To be cont.