Sentimientos Potatos

3Willings
1) Flashpoint
2) ATB - Trilogy
3) McEurope

My family loves collecting things.

My grandmother loves collecting junk. Her house has mountains of newspapers, magazines, bottles and scraps of metals. She says she collects them for selling in recycling centers. She even collects orange and mandarin peelings. She says she can turn them to candies or air fresheners.

Eww.

This is not the kind of magazines my grandma collected. Although I wish she did.

What I'm not a fan of is how she collects cooking oil. Not wanting to throw it away, she re-uses it for yonkers. One time I was cooking and I reached out for this can labeled 'cooking oil' - ithad this thick black liquid that smelt awfully bad. I swear, the cooking oil denatured back to being crude oil. It was really gross.

More stuff that smells bad - fake cologne

My dad follows my grandmother's footsteps in that he collects small little things.

Pen caps, paper clips, blown light bulbs, dead batteries, 8mm screws, magnets from speakers. Small little things are everywhere. One time I was playing around my dad's room, I found a gold tooth! What a find that was.

My sister too is in the collecting business. She's very pro-active about minimising land fill, so she holds on to broken appliances so that she doesn't have to buy new ones (which she says is the cause of over-flowing land fills).

Me, I'm a hoarder of sentimental things.

My good ole mix tapes. Too bad I don't have anything to play this anymore.

If I found sentimental value on anything (which is quite often), I'd most probably keep it forever.

Like ticket stubs to Forrest Gump - coz I loved that movie.

Or an oddly shaped piece of plastic a classmate gave me back in high school - because I thought 'it was cool'.

My very first bank card, library card, gym card. I even have my ID badge from year 7 camp.

If I had the chance to keep my first used diaper - I think I would have.

One of hundreds of CDs I threw away. Where am I gonna go today?

My drawers were filled with all sorts of stuff I couldn't sentimentally throw them away.

I still have the first red packet ever given to me. Money still intact (in fact, all red packets given to me I never take the money out..... should take the money out?) I guess I'm a bigger fan of packet than whats inside.

I had in my drawers, star shaped straws that a friend taught me how to make. I had the very first one I ever made and one I made using Hungry Jacks straws (because Hungry Jacks straws have sentimental value to me).

I can go on and on and on about stuff I had.

Had, being the operative word.

Last weekend I had a moment of cleaning fervor and I decided to finally let go of such sentimental stuff.

Not all, but some.

I went drawer by drawer and cold heartedly grabbed stuff and threw them in the bin.

My year 10 drawing project which got me an A+ went in the bin. Travel brochures for Disneyland 2001 went in the bin. My 'TV Hits New kids on the block' stickers went in the bin.

I had so much stuff I filled half a green bin.

At the end I felt strange. The logic in me is saying 'well you haven't looked for it in years - why would you miss it now?'

I really hated throwing this away. But sadly, they don't make polaroid films anymore.

I was happy that I was moving on and clearing out space for new stuff. But I was partly sad coz I felt I was betraying those past happy moments by throwing them away.

I guess thats kinda part of growing up isn't it. Moving on and not living in the past.

This wasn't mine. I threw it away anyways.