CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: PURSE-CLEANING PROCESS HOLDS KEY TO PERSONAL GROWTH

I am in the process of steeling myself for a hazardous and ugly chore.

Cleaning out my purse.

This requires many hours of mental and emotional preparation. It is not a task to be undertaken on a whim.

Sort of like defrosting the refrigerator. One false move, and your grocery budget for the month goes down the drain.

Literally.

My friend Jana carries a purse the size of a postcard. She tucks her Visa card, her driver's license and a lipstick in it and off she goes, armed for the day.

Jana, who operates on a much higher plane than the rest of us, theorizes that carrying actual physical baggage encourages lugging around emotional baggage.

Hanging on to the past, even if it's just a week-old ticket stub, is bad for the soul, Jana says. Life should be lived in the present tense.

That's the quintessential difference between us. Jana lives in the moment. I'd love to live in the moment, but it's lost in the black hole at the bottom of my purse.

I am a magnet for detritus. My desk at work is stacked with old newspapers, press releases, notes, copies of ordinances. What needs to be filed, gets filed. The rest gets piled up.

My apartment, my purse, even my car, are the same, packed with stuff I might need later, or frankly, never needed in the first place but don't have the energy to toss out.

That's why cleaning out my purse is such an ordeal, because it's the first step in a process of de-stuffing my life, the start of a cleaning frenzy.

Once I take all the trash out of my purse, which could hold a mama Doberman and her pups, I see all the other stuff I could be throwing out.

Newspapers, old magazines, junk mail. The cable bill receipt from October 1995.

And that's just in the living room.

A few months ago, I went on a mini-cleaning frenzy and cleaned out my closets and dresser drawers. At the end of it, three large trash bags of clothes I don't wear anymore were hauled to my favorite charity.

It felt good until I got up a few days later, looked in my closet and decided I didn't have anything to wear.

The real problem with getting rid of the detritus in your life is once it's gone, you need more.

And the cycle begins again.

It's hard for me to throw anything away, even when I know I don't need it. I hold onto ticket stubs. I hold onto grudges. And when it's time to organize things, I go out and buy scrapbooks and self-help books on anger management.

It's at moments like this when I realize my only coping skill is the ability to turn any opportunity for personal growth into a shopping trip.

I would love to be one of those people who can hike across Europe with a toothbrush, two shirts, a pair of pants and a week's worth of unmentionables tucked neatly away in a shoe box.

And every time the cleaning frenzy starts that's what I'm going to turn into.

Hah!

In the meantime, though, I hear old receipts and water bill stubs rustling in the bottom of my purse, and my favorite lipstick has temporarily disappeared, so I guess it's time to get down to business.

Now if I can just get the Doberman out of there.

Peggy O'Farrell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.