Hmm, maybe you should stop at flea markets...

"Clutter drains your energy - and you don't realize it till it's gone. Every item in your home has an energy to it. When items go a long time unused, unloved and uncared for, they become stuck, stagnant energy that actually physically drains you of your energy." Ariane Benefit

Since I have four siblings, I would like to think that I am pretty good at sharing. I’ve been trained and seasoned by some of the finest sharers in the country.

My sister, Courtney, shared her room with my brother, Sam, and me for about six years longer than she should have. Especially because Sam and I both had our own rooms the entire time, we were just afraid to sleep in them alone. This happened, literally, every single night. Except for one time, she was fed up (I can’t blame her) so I proceeded to sleep in the blanket closet down the hall. I really didn’t want to sleep in my room.

This is just one example, because truly, everyone in my family shares very nicely. My siblings definitely all got O’s in the “Plays well with others” category of elementary school report cards.

However, if there is one thing that I have never shared (I've never had to, really) is the best day of the year: September 5, AKA my birthday. (Yes, I realize it is selfish to call your own birthday the best day of the entire year. But everyone thinks it, at least I’m honest…)

I'm not a twin, so no one else has ever been around to share the day. Luckily, I discovered once I arrived at IU, I don't really mind sharing my birthday, because, I now get to share September Five with my amazing friend Jordan.

Jordan is the single reason that I place any belief in Zodiac signs. I still certainly don't believe in horoscopes (though we do often race to text them to each other on a daily basis), however, maybe something is to be said for parallel personalities being born at a certain time of year.

We share an uncanny amount of similarities. One, in particular, is a strong aversion to cords. Both of us really hate it when you can see cords in our rooms. Just run it under the carpet, please!

We also don’t like clutter. We both prefer to everything to be put away and neither of us display unnecessary items in our rooms.

I’d like to think that I’ve become somewhat more accepting of clutter over time…

When I was younger, I was known to remove certain pieces of furniture from my room and put them in the hallway. My mom would round the corner and bam! An extra dresser would be waiting for her.

She didn’t particularly love this exercise in spring (or winter, summer and fall) cleaning. It was kind of like I was just trying to share the furniture with everyone else, though…

One afternoon, I walked into my room to find that my brothers, Duke and Sam, had filled it with extra furniture from around the house. While I hate to admit it, I think facing such a fear helped me; it’s that whole idea of immersion.

Now, being in college means smaller spaces shared with people of different tastes.

Thus, Jordan and I have both (in our opinion) become more tolerant of other people’s decorative choices.

One woman’s cluttered mess is another woman’s Claude Monet, right?

Two Indiana women also experienced a trash to treasure moment this week when they discovered Weegee memorabilia inside a trunk they found at a Kentucky yard sale.

The trunk was filled with letters and photographs that the Indianapolis Museum of Art was eager to acquire. Apparently these artifacts are pretty valuable to the IMA.

As I read about the Hoosier woman that discovered these antiques, I thought about what I might have done had I purchased the zebra-stripe trunk. I’m scared to say that I probably would have purged the trunk with haste. I am almost certain I would have failed to call a rare-documents dealer.

Maybe I should try to take this lesson into consideration next time I find myself in the mood to rid my life of clutter. Because you never know what valuable things are surrounding you.

I mean, I might think that a poem from my eighth grade boyfriend is trash, but if he starts a band and wins a Grammy, those could be considered lyrics to a hit song.