Desk Drawers of Doom

This week, I started a major project. I began packing up all my belongings to move out. I will be moving to a house of girls I know from church, including my sister.

The spot in their house is available now, which is the only logical reason I can give for why I am moving in the weeks leading up the Christmas when I have a million projects on the go for school and am still working 25 hours a week. Suffice it to say, I will not finish in one day.

Today, I realized again how much work I have ahead of me when I discussed furniture with my mom. She has big plans for turning my bedroom into a hobby room/wedding planning room leading up to my sister's wedding, and so I while the bed, the dresser and bookshelf are mine to take, my giant desk will be left behind for her use.

Now to understand why that is a piece of blogworthy news, you have to understand something about this desk. I first started using it when I was thirteen years old and it's drawers contained the toys I wanted to stuff away when the need to look cool came up. This desk is made up of two columns of drawers; four on each side - that are very sturdy, and completely detachable from the board across the top that serves as the desktop (it may also have served as a door in previous years, I can never remember). This has been a great comfort to me over the years because even when I was not using my entire desk, I shoved the drawers in my closet to store all the essentials inside.

Over the past nine years my mother has tried on many occasions to convince me to clean them out. Whenever we move, I have evaded the problem by taping the drawers and transporting them as they are. That one snow day in the ninth grade where she suggested I use the extra time to dejunk, I "categorized" by looking at the contents on the surface of each drawer, writing what I'd seen on a masking tape label and sticking it on the front. At least until I decided to go tobogganing instead.

This time, I am cornered, as the drawers are not coming with me, and my new desk has none. So for the first time in nine years; I really do have to dejunk, pack up, and as my mother always says:

"Be ruthless."

This afternoon I embarked on my adventure expecting to find a lot of old memories and feel incredibly nostalgic as I boxed things up and threw a few away. In my first two drawers, these are the "treasures" I found:

• my grade 11 student ID; always worth commemorating.
• paint chips from that one time I considered repainting my dresser, took every colour from Home Depot, and then changed my mind.
• three bottles of wedding bubbles.
• buttons to articles of clothing I do not remember owning, or outgrew five years ago.
• a sizable collection of expired coupons. Seriously, why did I think that was good place to hang onto them?
• flashcards from my Science 30 diploma exam.
• half a drawers worth of dead pens.
• an invite to a friend's 17th birthday party. We are now both 22.
• my 30 Hour Famine pledge form from grade 11. So that's where it was . . .
• every college brochure I ever received in high school, and yes, that is a sizable number.
• my wisdom teeth. I kid you not. My dad was quite proud of how intact they were when he took them out, so he put them in a cute little container and asked if I wanted to take them home. I'm still wondering if that was a good idea, or just weird.

Suffice it to say, most everything went in the garbage bag.