Un-Stuffing Stuff

I had to laugh when I read “The Last page” editorial in the new Smithsonian magazine that arrived yesterday. Normally I don’t venture to pick it up and read it, but for some reason today I did. Its timing could not have been better. You see, Sam and I are engaged in un-stuffing our house right now, so the article was quite apropos:

 “We are all foot soldiers in this war, though mostly AWOL. Surveys say that 73 percent of all Americans enter their houses via the garage—each of them staring straight ahead to avoid seeing the stuff piled up where the cars are supposed to go. The other 27 percent never open the garage door, for fear of being crushed beneath what might come tumbling out.” (Conniff, Richard, “The Hoarding Instinct,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 2012, p. 92.).

I wouldn’t say Sam and I are hoarders exactly. I mean we don’t have a house such as you might find featured on the TV show The Hoarders. What we DO have is loads of stuff that we’ve bought or dragged home through the years that really is useful. It’s just ended up stored in boxes or piled up and dragged along with us as we’ve moved. We don’t have a house with little trails winding through mountains of stuff—and we know what that’s like, because we do have a friend who does. Our excess baggage is mostly relegated to a back room (not the garage) and is primarily the result of our last move where we packed it all up and then somehow never un-packed it. The pile isn’t very tidy anymore either, because I’ve had to paw through it from time to time through the years to find various items. I’ve even gone and bought new things I already had that were lost somewhere in the heap, because it was too much trouble to try and locate them.

We were always good scroungers too. It never escaped either of us when we could put somebody’s cast-offs to good use. That behavior stood us in good stead all those years when we were living from hand to mouth, and it was a survival skill, because we couldn’t afford to buy new stuff! We had Good Will and Salvation Army sofas and chairs, not to mention parental cast-offs, as our furniture right up until we bought the house we currently live in. In fact, we still have my Grandma Rose’s bedroom set, because we never got around to replacing it during the furniture buying frenzy. We decided not to spend any more money.

The Christmas holidays this year were the turning point, because we were so tired of all our junk that we resolved to finally sort it out and get it out of here. It seemed pointless to decorate, when we first needed to just get rid of stuff. We’ve made great strides, too, though Sam still has not physically hauled anything away yet. There are clothes for the blind or homeless, and dishes, knick knacks, and other small items for the Thrift Store. Some stuff did get put in the trash or the recycle bin, though there are loads of things still left to sort. We talked about how we want to redecorate too, so the house will not only have more room, but it will also be more livable.

Better than any of that, however will be the relief I feel when the burden of all that stuff is gone. No I don’t want to go back to it, either. I would far rather live a more Spartan existence than to ever have to look at a pile of boxes ever again, knowing that I or someone else will have to someday go through them.

I well remember the two days I spent sorting through all the stuff in my dear Grandmother Rose’s house after she passed away. The job fell to me and me alone, because my sister and her family members could not get off work to help, though they did haul away and sell or find homes for everything after I went through it all. I particularly remember going through the boxes of old mail in her basement, and I swear she had saved EVERY bill, birthday, and Christmas card she ever received.  On the one hand, it was kind of nice that so many people had sent her remembrances through the years, and reading a few of the notes brought tears to my eyes. It got to be a bit overwhelming, though, so believe me, nobody will have to sort through that kind of stuff when I am gone!