Have You Cleaned Out Your Childhood Bedroom?

This summer, my divorced parents were both miniaturized at the same time, but neither of them lived in the apartment I grew up in, but I was mean/lucky enough to keep the squirrels away in their home. When they asked me to experience my old things, I was surprised by my reaction…

I didn’t want to keep all that stuff, but I definitely didn’t want it they To get rid of it. Do you want to close my museum? ! ? ! i don’t think so. I limped, complained, and expressed almost zero thanks to those who allowed their homes to be a storage unit for something that didn’t really mean to them, like the letter I got at a camp where I slept 1000 years ago.

Still, there were some real gems in the mix. I took shop classes from kindergarten to junior high school, although it’s not very convenient. The archives featured hinged boxes I made at the age of five, followed by purple velvet.

I’m still proud of this.

“You don’t want this wooden doll I made?” I asked my dad later. “She has a movable arm, but a braid made of yellow wire attached to a nail driven into her head, and a bed matching the painted rose?” I was serious. He smiled, but he didn’t say yes.

Much of my early art was very, very large. My mother had a 3×5-foot framed painting of Demeter and Persephone since she studied Greek mythology. My father had a similar sized self-portrait from elementary school. under eye.

A photo of me from school when I was 3 (left) and 4 years old. The turtleneck has the word “large enough” around the torso and I wish the parents had held it!

Since graduating from high school, I have already scraped out the collection I am willing to throw at at various points, but the current process has been exhausting. I threw out the school yearbook and took some pictures of the school. I grabbed a book I loved as a child and thrust a few paper ephemera into the back of my closet. Somewhere in that confusion is my ticket to see Spice Girls at Madison Square Garden in 1998, and a diary that I tried to disguise my school notebook by writing Inglish on the front cover. (The spelling wasn’t my strong suit.)

Goodbye, Chair:/

Back in Brooklyn, I brought two old child-sized wooden chairs to the house. However, after moving them around my apartment for a few weeks, I realized there was no room. I had the courage for days, then I let them out on the streets and left in the real pain of sadness.

When I went to Bodega later, the chair hadn’t been caught yet, so I took it home again. I somehow resisted the impulse and by the next morning they were gone. I still miss them, but I like to think they have more use in the kids’ bedrooms in Brooklyn.

I took home a velvet-lined box (of course!!!) and a goofy paper Mach vase that our amazing art teacher had us build around a tennis ball canister and allowed us to hold water and flowers. I refused to maintain a huge self-portrait with the eyebrows under my eyes, but I still laugh at my brother’s memories for many years. I didn’t stolen or throw the wooden doll. She slept peacefully in a custom wooden bed with roses painted in her father’s closet. I’m still trying to convince him that it’s a collector’s item.

Now, you say to me: If you excavated your childhood bedroom, what did you find? Is it strangely difficult to say goodbye? What did you do with what you want to keep?

PS Where did you grow up and what is the age gap between your children?

(Top photo of Gisela Gueiros apartment Alpha Smoot,styling Kate Jordan. )