My closet back home is a place filled with stories of my life. While there are wrinkled clothes flung carelessly on the floor and shelves of miscellaneous boxes stacked high, the stories behind the things in my closet reveal much more about me than just my unorganized habits.

There’s no door to my closet. Instead, little paper beads dangle down from the top like some exotic entrance you would find at the front of a Tiki Hut. The beads are a decoration put up by my sister when she lived in the room and are a reminder of how I got demoted to the smaller room in the house after I left for college. When I reach into my closet for something, I pull the beads aside like strands of hairs. I really don’t like them, but they’re something that’s always been there in my closet I hardly realize they are even there anymore.

Dig into the heap of clothes and you’ll find my most valuable possession of last summer: my backpacking pack. For 30 days I lived out of that thing as I traveled through Croatia, Italy, Spain and France. Stuffed to the brim with my clothes, it weighed nearly 35 pounds near the end of my trip and boy did my back pay for it. It’s a cheap old pack that my grandma picked up at goodwill shortly before my trip, the type that serious backpackers would scoff at, maybe even tell you you’re better of traveling with nothing at all. But it was perfect for me, even if it wouldn’t have lasted even a week longer of wear and tear. A tattered rip runs down the face of the long blue bag like blistered sausage that’s been left to cook for too long. I had filled it so tight with all my belongings that it began to seriously fall apart. Now it sits there in my closet, retired from all the crazy adventures in Europe.

On the shelves of my closet is an assortment of items. There are several unopened gifts, like a crystal growing set from my 7th birthday or a 500-piece Lake Tahoe puzzle. There is a frayed feather shuttlecock from the days when my grandpa and I would hold summer badminton tournaments in his backyard. I would always win. Peek into a large brown box and you’ll find the golden glow of dozens of sports trophies. Each trophy tells it’s own story, like the year my little league team put together a miserable season and went winless. Next to it, a trophy from the following year is a reminder of the undefeated season I had with a different team.

These are just a few things in my closet back home. They are objects that no longer play much of a role in my life. But they are mementos of my youth, days of innocence and carefree living. Someday soon I’ll clean out that closet and throw away some of these things, toss them in the garbage to never be seen again. The memories and stories behind them, however, will always be there with me.