I am not a hoarder.

I only have 2 rows of boxes.

Or at least, that's what I always say when my mum is giving a lecture on how messy the house is because of all my 'rubbish'; a word she uses to refer to my belongings as.

I've always convinced myself that I do not have a lot of things, I only have 2 rows of a few boxes stacked on each other in the store room. That's not a lot, right? I mean, in comparison to the amount of things my mother has? It's really not a lot. Trust me. Also at least the things I own/keep are things that has sentimental value or I believe are items that would bring some use to me somewhere in the future. Far far future.

That's what I thought.

Until I had to remove all the boxes out of the room, into the living room to create space for my siblings boxes because we're shifting rooms around, and also for the first time in close to 19 years of living on this planet, I will finally, be having my own room.

But let's not get sidetracked, I will bring up that outrageously good news another day.

I shifted all the boxes to the living room and decided to see what I can further remove/throw/donate out of the boxes and what can be kept for my future room. The things I found inside triggered different emotions and thoughts. Some were nice, most are old, and some just made me go 'what the hell was I thinking?'.

I found candies inside which I've kept for the past 2 years and forgotten about it. I found a huge amount of tissue packets that I probably stored in case of a rainy day after a big fire burnt out all the cloths and there was nothing left to wipe the dust off the television screen.

I found a number of useless junks.

But I also found a lot of things that are useful, other than 2 boxes of books I want to keep, 3 boxes of books I'm done reading, there were also things from my past like toys I got from my grandma or my aunt which has sentimental value, or things I bought last time when I imagined would look great in my (then non-existent) room if I ever had one, which I'm going to soon.

The whole thing was a epiphany for me.

I have always denied it, because the thought of it just made me shudder when I think that I will grow to be like my mother in the future with a whole house of items I will never use like a box of small boxes, which by the way, my mother really do have such a thing in the storage room right now.

But unfortunately this event has caused me the privilege of denying it. I am, alas, like my mother, grandmother, godmum, well basically my mum's side of the family, a hoarder.

The epiphany wasn't really an epiphany until I was looking for a huge plastic bag to store all the junk that needs to be thrown away, I found things in the plastic bag and thought that I should keep those things. So that was when it hit me; while I was looking for a rubbish bag to throw the rubbish out, I found more rubbish to keep instead.

I still prefer to use the term 'a collector'.

♥oves,

vee.