Lately, I find myself in my “Swedish Death Cleaning” era. If you are unsure as to what this means, you can google it, but essentially I am cleaning out all the nooks and crannies of my home so that someday (hopefully many years from now) when I am no longer present, my dear daughters will have less to deal with. I have lived in my home for 18 years and when we moved into it, I had a two-year-old and a six-year-old, so time for organizing was quite limited. I’ve slowly begun the process of analyzing what I own and whether or not I still value it in my life enough to take up real estate in my home and/or mind.
The current project is clearing out the paper filing cabinet and taking the “sensitive” materials to be shredded. I own a shredder, but this is going to be next-level shredding as I clear out 30 years of old documents. By the way, did you know that UPS will take care of your shredding? Well, they will for $2/pound….that’s SO worth it to me!
Yesterday, I was cleaning out old income tax files from 1999/2000 and came across the paper calendar that I used in the year 2000. I am not sure why I had stored it in the income tax folder, but I found it and it took me on a trip down memory lane. My oldest was 1 year old (she recently got married and celebrated her 25th birthday). I chose to stay at home full-time when she was born, so I did not have many schedules to manage in 2000. I remember feeling a bit lost after having worked full-time for years, and the calendar helped me feel like I still had reasons to care about how I filled my time. I wrote my husband’s work schedule, important birthdays, pediatric appointments, and paydays, which were highly anticipated events of the month! I even made notes about extra expenses we would have to budget for at the beginning of the month. Some of the sweetest memories I came across were my daughter’s first steps on February 16, 2000, the first snowfall of 2000 in Memphis, TN on January 28, 2000, and the very first women’s ministry bible study I ever participated in at Bellevue Baptist Church in September of 2000. That date is special to me because it served as the beginning of my journey into reading and studying the Bible, which started transforming me and continues to do so to this very moment.
Finding this calendar made me nostalgic and a bit emotional. I had forgotten how much I relied on moms’ groups/play dates to keep me sane as I learned how to be a mother to a precious, strong-willed little girl. It’s a good reminder that the things we worry about in the current moment will likely be forgotten in a few years. It also reminds me that God has been so faithful over all of these years, and what a gift it is to have had all of this time to watch my daughters grow into amazing adults with their own calendars to maintain.
I know paper calendars are being replaced by digital, and in many ways, I am in full support of this. I love digital copies of just about everything! However, I will say that there is something so sweet about coming across this little time capsule with the ink smudges and crossed-out words, and even crayon marks created by my toddler’s little hands. I will surely have great success weeding out many things in my home, but this little calendar may not make the cut of the Swedish Death Cleaning guidelines for elimination; For now, it brings me joy.
