It started with a friend recommending the book, "Stuff," by Randy Frost and Gail Steketee, about compulsive hoarders. I read the book, fascinated, realizing as I got deeper and deeper into the book that I share a lot of the traits of people who fill their houses with piles and piles of stuff.
Emotional attachment to inanimate objects? Check. Collection of art supplies in the belief that the supplies will make me an artist? Check. Ice skates never worn for 25 years? Check. Pieces of papers filling and falling off my bulletin board because I thought if I couldn't see the information I would forget it? Check.
Fortunately over the years I have had several painful but useful "interventions" that kept our house from overflowing. Like after buying "Clearing your Clutter with Feng Shui," when I went an emptied all the stuff from behind all the doors in the house. Like the time Dave and Laura stayed with us and picked up a four year old bouquet of moldy dusty pussy willows and asked if I really really needed to keep them around, and kept asking questions like that. Like the time the contractors took the entire contents of the attic over the garage and put it in the driveway and said, "OK, decide what you're going to keep and what you're going to put in the dumpster. It's gonna rain in three hours.
Since I've read the book I've been making a lot of painful (to me) decisions about things kept "just in case," and things I "might use someday." And clothes that belonged to my grandmother and dresses not worn in 40 years. And eyeglass cases. And bags of t-shirts kept 37 years. And unused frying pans. And empty sketchbooks. And riding boots. Sigh.
I never got to the state where my house was unusable. Looking back, before the feng shui book, I realize my bedroom was cluttered and piled high with stuff on top of the dressers. And bookcases with books too heavy on sagging shelves. Not now, though.
I am learning to look straight at an object and try to evaluate the emotional hold it has over me. I ask what is the likelihood of someone asking me to ride a horse on a moment's notice. Or me taking up a jumprope routine. Or figure skating. I tell myself that if the opportunity truly arises then I will go get another pair. In the meantime my closet is not filled with unused and slightly moldy shoe leather! But the Stuff book says that decision-making is hard for people with these tendencies. And that it's really tiring to think about this stuff. It's true; I am exhausted.
But we are starting the new year with the vow to rid our house of clutter. We even toasted on New Year's Eve with a bottle of wine we had been "hoarding" for our entire marriage. Waiting to drink it when we got married, bought a house, had our first child.... but never got round to it. And by the time we did, although the BV 1962 George Latour private reserve was mildly drinkable (more a port than a cab sav) it had been kept past its usefulness. And that was a shame.
So we toast to a new attitude, for making space in our lives for new adventures, but not new things!
Happy New Year!
