~a column by Colleen O’Brien
My daughter says to me, “Mom, you have too much stuff!”
I am insulted because I’ve been (I think) almost religious in getting rid of my “stuff.”
Points of view are always coming up with my daughter and me. I am of course 25 years older than she, so I not only have more wisdom, knowledge, experience and know-how (laugh track inserted here), I have been accumulating a quarter of a century longer than she has.
I spent the first half of my life acquiring and the rest of it getting rid of; and I’m talking mostly about big stuff – furniture, big table-top tools, houses – and living in smaller abodes with less space. During this time, I’ve acquired my share of small appliances that were purposely not long for this world, their obsolescence manufactured in. I soon was shopping at second-hand stores for an iron like my sister’s that Mom gave her when she went to college; a small crockpot from the first iteration of them; and a floor lamp with a plug that has two prongs the same size. I went through two irons before I wised up and bought a second-hand one like my sister’s hardy and still-used household necessity.
When we left our family home in Nevada, selling most of the furniture, leaving some of it the new owners coveted, getting rid of clothes, shoes, a few books, I felt lighter than air. We had jettisoned the extraneous (or so we thought), rented a 10-foot by 10-foot storage unit for the favorite things, the sentimental, the three-generation valuables and hit the road. Both of us were euphoric – not just the freedom of hitting the roads ahead of us, a true American phenom, but the freedom of having so few possessions with us in our small little trailer that we were going to live in for . . . we didn’t know how long.
The thing was, though, I started out on that vagabond journey with two pairs of shoes and soon had six; sandals is all they were, but acquisitions nonetheless, “acquiring” being one of the built-in behaviors of our ancient psyches to save us from something – things that go bump in the night, I suppose – mastodons, thieving neighbors over the next mountain, thunder and lightning.
When I left my last house, a small one in Jefferson, 800 square feet with a likewise basement, I had to spend way too much time in that basement going through boxes that came with us from when we sold our house in Nevada. I’d not looked in the boxes for a decade, so it was pretty obvious they contained no essentials. Even so, at times I found myself weighing if I should keep the 40 picture frames that once held photos of my grandchildren, which I had removed and put in a folder. There was no room for 40 picture frames in my present house. What was I pondering?
Almost everything in the basement was thrown out or given away, and I sold the house itself with all its furniture, bedding, kitchenware, garden tools. That was freedom . . . even when I once in a while wondered why I hadn’t brought with me my iron skillet or that pretty bowl I served salad in. Fleeting sorrow; I made do with what I had because it worked just as well. How many pretty salad bowls does one need?
Each day I put something – usually clothing – in the Salvation Army box. I have a blouse from 1995 that I bought at a rummage sale at the local Methodist church. I still wear it, so it won’t go. I have a sweatshirt I can no longer get into that I bought off a black marketeer in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1989. It’s somebody’s red, white and yellow futbol shirt, with a number and a name on it. I should hang it as art, for I like to look at it.
I think my daily contribution to Salvo is righteous, but my daughter looking into my closet is right. I have too much stuff, especially in there. Why can’t I get rid of something I haven’t even tried on in decades, let alone worn? Did I wear it to a dance with my husband where he said as we came home, “You were the dish of the dance”? I don’t recall. One of these days, it too will go.
My art closet is a place I go to daily but never to weed out the junk. It seems it’s all important, so it will be the closet that my kids will first throw their hands up at and with glee then throw it all away. When I left Jefferson, I invited the high school art teacher to my basement art area, and she took brushes and half-empty paint bottles and art paper for her students. I had replicas in my other house, so I didn’t need to be transporting any of it with me. The remainder I left with the new owner, whom I think was an artist herself.
My husband’s side of the basement was easy: it was all golf, and I gave it all to his golf buddies. I pictured him writhing in pain wherever it was that he went when he died.
I understand the “less is more” theory, and I subscribe to it to some extent. But I do like my artifacts and books around me so I can appreciate their existence in my life. I like funny birthday cards propped on my desk for a while: “Mom, I remember when I was little, and running away seemed like the only option” opening to “I’m glad you didn’t.”
The cycle of life isn’t just being young and getting old; it’s acquiring and unaquiring. Both of them take a measure of thoughtfulness. And I’d rather get rid of my stuff myself than make my kids feel bad for having to throw it all away with the muttering between them: “Why on earth was Mother saving this?!”
