It was spring cleaning time at my household over the weekend. I try to keep an organized home but often things get overlooked and I am surprised to unearth certain items as I go about my never-ending task of home re-arranging.

I was in the basement spare bedroom and behind one of the dressers I stumbled upon a framed picture that used to hang on the wall of my apartment years ago. I paused for a moment when I recognized it. It was a photograph of a shark with the caption “Galapagos Islands: Ecuador”. It’s actually quite a nice picture but the finishing was now faded and dusty. Wow. I had carried this with me years ago (decades actually) when I was back-packing in South America. It made the trek with me, survived the airplane ride home, then got framed and displayed for many years. But the fact that I didn’t even realize that is was ‘missing’ meant that it was as good as forgotten these last few years.

Fondness. Nostalgia. The memories of walking through dusty landscapes, the gritty after-taste as ancient buses trundled past me. The intense sweetness of Coca-cola in glass bottles. Hitch-hiking in the Andes Mountains. Living in a beach hut on stilts and when I went to bed I had prop my shoes up against the wall (so scorpions wouldn’t take refuge in them) and when I awoke I could see the ocean waves beneath my feet. This was all conjured up by the discovery of a forgotten wall-hanging.

“Hmmm, it’s old. You’re going to turf it, right?” Robin’s words brought me back to the present. My gut reaction was ‘no’; how on earth could I just toss something aside that had made an epic travel with me, and represented a youthful, carefree chapter of my life? But the practical side of me took over. I have lots of ‘stuff’ that I hold on to for various reasons (even though I am not a serious pack-rat). I still have rings and bracelets from South America that I brought home with me, items that have kept their appeal and usefulness and can stay tucked in drawers.

During that spring cleaning session I made the go/no-go decision right there. The picture would not stay. Since we were also getting rid of a dresser set, I added the Galapagos picture to the give-away pile. And just to make our lives easier (to spare the effort of transporting anything), we set the dresser set and the picture in our back alley with a ‘Free’ sign. Shortly after we moved everything out there, I promptly forgot about the picture again.

The next morning after checking on his garden Robin announced, “Guess what, the dresser and picture are gone!” Yes, someone (or some people) had loaded up the items from the alley and took them to a good home (I can only assume). There it was. Finality. The picture was gone forever, not just tucked away in my basement waiting to be found again in another 10 years.

I have to admit that I was momentarily sad for a couple of minutes. But it was fleeting and I got over it pretty quickly while I went about my usual weekend busy-ness. It is good to spring-clean the mind every once in awhile. One does not want too much mental mind-clutter, and there is still always room for good memories.