I consider myself to be a fairly disciplined person. Generally speaking — although not every time — I accomplish my daily tasks and lead a healthy lifestyle. But for whatever reason, I always have to push myself to organize my room. It is a chore that I just never have the motivation to complete.
When I do finally get around to this tedious feat, I feel fantastic afterward. And it’s not just that my clothes are put away and organized or that the room smells like a Bath & Body Works scented candle. The best part is finding the random stuff I had no idea I was even missing.
Recently, I was doing a mid-semester cleanout of my college room. Going down the checklist I’d been procrastinating for quite some time, I rearranged some furniture, finally found a place to put random grocery bags and developed an effective organization system for my endless supply of University apparel. Besides all of this, I also found some relics that made me smile. While some were useless trinkets, others were actually pretty important, and finding them felt like discovering an open table at Clem on a busy weeknight.
One of these was a card game called Jungle Speed — or, as we called it in our theatre company growing up, “Spungle Jeed.” I had no idea it ever came to college with me, but sure enough, it was tucked away in a box of seldom-touched First Aid supplies.
Instantly, I was transported back to green rooms back in 2017, where I made lifelong memories with friends I don’t get to see anymore. Though today we all have completely different lives in all sorts of places, when I stumbled upon Jungle Speed, it was like we were together again pre-pandemic.
Next up was a box full of birthday cards. I read through special handwritten messages from my parents during some of my life’s best — and worst — moments. Among the 20 or so cards in the box, my favorite findings included a note my parents wrote for me for the first day of college and a loose $20 bill — a reward for all that cleaning, I guess.
As I continued my cleaning quest, more and more artifacts kept resurfacing. I sorted through a tie I lost a few months ago, some socks, a few sports media game passes and other items my past self was too lazy to organize. As a nostalgic fourth-year preparing to begin a whole new chapter as a real adult, it felt amazing to find a few reminders of old chapters in my life.
Because of all the memories I found, a task I had absolutely zero — or somehow, less than zero — enthusiasm for ended up becoming a highlight of midterm season.
It really is easy to forget that these faraway moments are not all that old — even old pillows and blankets from early childhood. It just feels like they are, because college is a time of such significant growth. While we temporarily leave those memories behind, they just happen to be waiting to be rediscovered under a pile of hoodies.
Finding artifacts isn’t just a genesis for a quick smile — it is a necessary process of remembering and appreciating all of life’s moments, both small and large.
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