roses

As part of my mission to declutter, I'm spending March purging things I have sentimental but useless attachments to.


For my first post regarding letting go of sentimental (but functionally useless) items, I decided to tackle a rather difficult one.  My first area of attack is the extremely cluttered top of my dresser, and first to go are dried flowers.

I have a deep and abiding love of roses, and a nearly compulsive tendency to dry and keep all roses I get.  Ever.  Like, in my whole life.

see?

I hang them upside down until dry, and then put them... somewhere.  Unfortunately, I'm running out of somewheres, and the darn things do take up space.  And collect dust.  And shed little crumbly bits of vegetation all over the carpet.  The picture above shows some of them in a red vase, but I have far too many in my room as well.  The bunch of flowers laying down in the picture have been doing just that: laying down on my dresser, hiding behind some other stuff and not even really visible.  How is this doing anyone any good?

The Jones Soda jar was a shared moment between myself and a very good friend, and the purple and green Mardi Gras necklaces in them symbolic of our favorite colors.  I love you, girl, but I don't need a Jones Soda bottle to tell me so. 

When I was little, I participated in a lot of theatre.  I would sing and dance up on stage with lots of other children with mediocre talent, and I had a great time.  At every single one of those shows, my mom would give me a single rose.  I loved those.  The little hexagonal jar contains the petals from every single rose she gave me after a performance (can you tell I can be a little obsessive sometimes?).   However, it's really the memories that matter, and her thoughtfulness in doing that in the first place.  The roses symbolized personal achievement and parental affection, but they don't really serve a purpose in their undead zombie-petal state in a box.  It's about the memories. 

So the flowers are getting thrown away.  I got lots of enjoyment from them when they were fresh, and I have enough dried flowers in my decor right now, thanks.  The bottle is being temporarily repurposed to hold my masquerade mask, and the petal box will be used to hold buttons or something in my craft room.  The Mardi Gras beads are getting added to the bin of random things to hand out to kiddies on Halloween.  And as for the petals... those are getting set free and crumbled to enrich the garden soil.  Thank you for being there all those times, mom.