We should all live as if we are about to move, or at least with the fear that someone will look in our closets, files and basement corners.This new philosophy is partly inspired by TLC's Clean Sweep, and partly by the fact that my little sister is considering a move to our spare bedroom.Clean Sweep is a show that has homeowners open their doors to all their dirty secrets. Literally. Their secrets are that they can't enjoy their homes because of the clutter and filth. Some haven't sat on their sofa since Friends premiered. The shag carpet in their bedrooms doesn't need replacing because they never walked on it without a shield of unfolded laundry, preventing wear, and it's now back in style.Fearing that we'd have to call in the show's experts for emergency help once we got an extra person under our roof, my sister is thinning her possessions.She's going through all her stuff, deciding what to keep, what to throw and what to put in some other relative's care.Unfortunately, I will not be allowed to do the same. At least not openly.I would love to purge half the things in my basement, for example. Our utility room looks more like a nightmarish garage sale than a place for appliances and seasonal storage.I just happen to be married to a very sentimental man who thinks scribbles on scrap paper, movie stubs and 5-year-old health insurance manuals are valuable. His theory that boxing up this "material" keeps things tidy doesn't work when we're slowly adding to our collection of stacked boxes.He gets attached to inanimate objects, in other words. For me, it can all go in the trash. Maybe I'm cold. Maybe I'm irreverent. But then again, maybe a t-shirt from a concert in 1990 is precious. Maybe a newsletter that was wrongly delivered to our home is worth reading. I guess I better get that stuffed animal he won at a carnival out of the garbage.If I haven't learned anything from watching Clean Sweep, at least I can enjoy the fact that others have much more to hide than we do.
