It’s insidious. If you live in a house, it’ll be lurking upstairs, downstairs, and
almost certainly in your garage, basement and garden shed. And if, like me, you
live in the more restrictive space of an apartment, it’s even tougher to cope
with.
If you have too much of
this pernicious thing, it multiplies itself over time until, like some monster
organism in a sci-fi movie, it begins to take over the house.
I and my wonderful wife,
Lynn, declared war against this invader when we lived in a lakeside
house in Connecticut. We had no weapons, suffered no casualties and took no
prisoners, because our war wasn’t against terrorists or tin-pot tyrants. No,
our enemy was stuff.
The need to act became
obvious when we were were spring cleaning in the cellar. Among the things we
discovered down there – besides dead spiders, dead creepy-crawlies and sawdust
from my last attempt at woodworking – were that we had, for example, no fewer
than six screwdrivers, umpteen wrenches and countless years old seed packets
with long expired use-by dates, and a hoard of empty propane bottles. Scarce
shelf-space was taken up by two dozen old jars of unassorted nails, screws,
nuts and bolts, and a stack of one-gallon cans of dried-up paint. Other useless
objects lurked in the shadows, including derelict heaters and fans, and several
infant-sized life jackets and car seats, all of which were now useless, since
the oldest of our thirteen grandchildren
is a mother in her thirties.
That part of our private
war on stuff was relatively simple. A few of our adult children were happy to
take a tool or a paintbrush or two, while the rest of it could be bagged up in
the garbage, or driven to the town dump. But, emotionally, it was much harder
to part with clothes and other household things. You can get pretty sentimental
about the pair of pajamas you bought for your honeymoon, or that Hindu
thingummy that dear old Aunt Gertie brought back from India. Getting rid of
that sort of thing calls for a hardening of the heart, and repeated reassurance
from your partner that you'll never wear that garment, or put that ornament or
whatnot on the mantle or credenza again. After that it's easy.
Upstairs, we each started
with our own clothes closets. In mine, the garments were so crowded together on
their hangers that it was almost impossible to elbow them apart to select
one. How many shirts, sweaters and
cardigans does a man need? And since I
wear one maybe three times a year, why do I still have more than fifteen
designer, regimental and club ties from my working days dangling from a rotary
tie-dispenser whose batteries died years ago?
There were enough pairs of shoes to turn Imelda Marcos green with envy;
black and brown formal shoes, sneakers, gardening shoes, canvas beach shoes,
sandals, wellies, and some hiking boots with soles like tractor-tires that I
haven’t worn for ages.
The hardest decisions of
all were about suits and blazers. The
suits came in formal and casual styles in shades of grey and navy in weights
for winter, summer and tropical wear. These, and a tux I now wear about as
rarely as a tie, were reduced to two suits, which is probably one too many.
Lynn went through the
same process, but was much more deliberate and relentless about it. Aren’t
women meant to be more sentimental than men? I was amazed to see how easily she
could turn her back on once-cherished suits and dresses like so many scorned,
discarded lovers. To me, those outfits were landmarks of some of our happiest
and most poignant moments of life together over all these decades.
Finally we progressed to
drawers stuffed with underwear and so many socks that you had to lean against
the drawers to close them. Even the
dining room revealed surplus china, table mats, coasters, glasses and a treasure
trove of cutlery.
In the end, bolstering
each other’s determination not to squirrel away this or that item for another
decade, we had overcome the enemy. By the time we were finished – and the
process took more than two days – the kitchen and the space around the back door
were jam-packed with a mountain of bulging plastic bags. We were ready for the final act of disposal.
There was a nice thrift
shop along Route 202 that benefited our
local hospital.
“Put them over there,”
said a decidedly upper-crust volunteer lady, pointing toward a corner stacked
to eye-level with a dowdy pile of cast-off clothes.
Nothing impresses these
people. No eyes opened a little wider at such a display of, say, Brooks
Brothers and Jaeger labels and the distinctive styles of Gucci and Hermes. To
them they were so much, well, stuff.
Wherever you go these
days you see those anonymous-looking self-storage places where they’ll lock
away your unused clothes and household items in window-less,
temperature-controlled rooms. I’m sure these have their uses, but I’ll bet many
of them would be half-empty if their customers adopted our simple war cry – if you don't need it, junk it.
***
