Do I own the stuff or does the stuff own me? This question blared at me early in my career, when the official nastiness and pettiness of my first law firm job walked into my office. Not that I remember what the set-to was all about. I just remember the blast through my brain–”I have got to get out of here.” And then I remembered, I just bought a couch. I was screwed.
That was only the early phase of The Aquisition. After so long in school my entry level federal pay check was consumed by pent-up demand. Silk blouses on sale soothed the pains of a questionable career choice and the years of ritual abuse of the baby lawyer. A duplex filled, a professional wardrobe hung. Electronics dazzled. Marriage gifted.
Then I had a child. More electronics, cooking gadgets, baby stuff. People unloaded their basements on me. Lucky me; lucky them. And all those little pink dresses were thoughtful gifts, to be sure, but the job of reviewing them, ordering them, remembering to put them on in that moment that they fit. That was my burden.
In the last fifteen years, death and disability have made the big deposits in my garage. It’s as if the hooded chess player rented a U-Haul. I have their stuff. The family: Aunt M’s tea set; Grandma’s impossible family portraits; Aunt E’s papers and photos; Dad’s yearbooks from Scott High. The books smell of mildew and I’ve nothing that would play his treasured Caruso 78s.
My Mother’s things took over the garage in three major installments as she downsized into a world of Alzheimer’s. They came largely unedited; my mind was on making sure her blood pressure got managed.
It exhausts me to just look at the stuff if my blinders should slip as I walk through the garage. It’s a huge sorting project I do over and over.
So I revisit my big stuff question. I know it’s a luxury to have this question—when so many people can’t even allow themselves to dream of having beautiful things. I never meant to be an acquirer. Many things have just dropped in on me. Stuff makes some folks happy. But I feel alternatively insulated and hemmed in. How do you know you don’t need it? Isn’t it reassuring to know it’s there…?
There’s the one year test—If I haven’t used “it” within a year clearly I don’t need it. It seems obvious that the boxes I’ve never opened after my last move shouldn’t make the next one. But my recent bouts of theatre remind me that anything can become a costume or a magical bit of set detritus.
That’s the wrong message.
One defensive strategy is to halt acquisition. I’ve done pretty well for a number of years. I’ve come to recognize and avoid one of my weaknesses—the desire to rescue a neglected bit of wonderment from the indignity of the sale table or cast-off status. It’s the bargain, the reverence, the rededication that could catch me. If I can avoid encountering the object, well, I’ll never miss it.
Sometimes the stuff pulls at me. It seems precious: gifts; the almost useful items, inchoate craft
projects. There’s stuff that could be useful given the precise planetary alignment that favors the
goddess of hoarding. Oh but the stuff weighs me down. It wants organizational schemes, clean-out, dust removal and space. It tries to trip me on my garage path.
On a good day, I can divorce the person from the item, the memory from the memento. Then quick, fill the boxes, call for the pickup and hand off those lovelies to brighten someone else’s existence. Now isn’t that a lovely empty space in my garage, my heart, and in my mind.