I was reading a piece in the New York Times’ Bucks Blog about how much stuff we have. It’s a problem that I struggle with, daily!
My cousins are here from England and they’re coming to dinner next week (when they get back from a week on the South Carolina beaches). I am looking at my house with fresh eyes and seeing the things that need to be done. Of course, I am making a list, and at the top is “get rid of stuff”.
I bought some shelving today at Ikea and that will help corral some things in the basement, 
When I moved to the UK, I got rid of every single thing I owned. At first, it nearly killed me because I had to make a decision about every single thing: give it away? sell it? pitch it? charity shop? Everything I owned had a brightly coloured sticky note on it, delineating its final destination.
I certainly can’t pare down to 15 or 39 articles like a man mentioned in the article, but I certainly can start de-accessioning some of my things. So, look to the right in the next week or so for items to appear on my long-neglected Etsy shop.
This is going to be my new philosophy:
What are your thoughts about stuff?
I think we're on the same wavelength at the moment, as I am decluttering my office, and applying the rule that if you haven't used it for over a year, you never will. (Difficult when it's an information source, such as old House & Gardens etc, but there comes a time...). Moving helps put this process into perspective, when as you say, you have to get rid of "stuff". I've long since stopped accumulating interiors "stuff", (except pictures, but they are really a long term investment, that I can enjoy, and maybe pass on to my heirs).
ReplyDeleteI had really pared down when I moved into this house, but things have crept up again. It makes me crazy.
DeleteI've got too much of the stuff too. Inherited family aretfacts, books , pictures etc. I feel I should hang on to these items to hand down to my son. Ah a basement, thats what I need.
ReplyDeleteI have a basement, and an attic (loft). I use the basement only. I don't even want to think about putting things in the loft.
DeleteI subscribe to the theory that "the clutter in my house is the clutter in my head". The timing of your post is couldn't be more appropriate as I have been purging in preparation for my Daughter (who happens to be a minimalist and a neat freak!!) and her husband and new baby to arrive tonight!
ReplyDeleteIt will be a long time before this reorganization is complete but it feels good to take the first steps.
Oh, Bonnie! I like that way of thinking. Maybe my clutter is what's doing my head in!
DeleteI'd like to empty the whole house and only put back what we really want/need/use. I guess that can be accomplished one room/closet/drawer at a time. Not enough hours in the day/days in the week.
ReplyDeleteHa! I tried that last summer when I moved. It sort of worked - i got rid of a lot, but then kept some things to go through later.
DeleteHi Meg,
ReplyDeleteI love this post. I have always held to the belief that one should only buy good stuff, Buy stuff that I really NEED. And buy stuff that I will love in 5 or so years. But I still seem to manage to acquire too much stuff.
Have a wonderful time with your cousins....the stuff will be waiting for you when they return to England.
Mary
There's just so much that I love!
DeleteTwo things have driven me to divest myself of a LOT of stuff over the past few years. First, cleaning out my parents' house after they passed was so traumatic. My mother and grandmother loved beautiful things and their lives were really quite orderly, but still, at the end, the work involved in distributing their things was so overwhelming that it took a huge hunk out of my life. I vowed to do all my sorting out now so that my children do not have to face the same massive task. Secondly, as our beautiful area has become dotted (read, blighted) by more and more storage unit facilities, they seem to state loudly and clearly that we collect too much stuff. I read in the paper everyday that so many of those units are abandoned and the items never claimed. Much if it is discarded. Like, you, Meg, I think very carefully these days before making a purchase.
ReplyDeleteIn my cleaning out process, I sorted everything appropriate into piles for my children and have given them to them only after they agreed they really wished to have them. Otherwise the things were donated.
The whole storage unit phenomenom is quite amazing. I went to an auction at one once and it was just so sad.
DeleteRemembering your comments that you'd sold everything when you moved to Wales, I actually thought of you when I read this NYT article this week! I went on a purge when I moved a few years ago, and co tinge to get rid of things every few months. Still too much stuff. When my teenage girls move out, I'll give them some of it, and get rid of even more. Some things are worth hanging onto, even if they aren't useful. Most of it, though, is merely taking up space and energy I don't have to worry about anymore.
ReplyDeleteThat's the thing - taking up energy! That makes me crazy.
DeleteSo timely. My MIL loved her things, her mother's things, her grandmother's things, her husband's mother's mothers things...everything had a story. I loved that about her from the beginning. She'd put an object in my hand and tell me the story. Sadly, there will not be another generation to pass these stories/things on to. I've begun the clearing out and letting go of the things and keeping the stories. At first I felt guilty, but found that if I give them away and tell the story, I send them on to a new family, a new journey. It's the best I can do.
ReplyDeleteAll of my things have stories, too. When I sell something, I try and tell the story of it, too.
DeleteEverything you own owns a piece of you. Choose wisely.
ReplyDeletethere are lots of pieces of me that i'd like to lose!
DeleteI couldn't agree more. I have inherited my dear Mum's stuff, most of which seem to be holiday souvenirs from Woolies which her patients (she was a nurse) had given her, plus assorted other awful things, bless her. My daughter is now insisting that NOTHING is given or thrown away - she wants it all but as she is only just 16, it's going to be a long time before she can take responsibility...So, up in the loft it goes, together with all MY stuff and 7000 books. A blooming nightmare!
ReplyDeleteIt's the books! At least I have a place where they can go, although I usually come home with the same number or more!
Deleteafter my move i've been very careful about what I buy and bring into my space. I always was before as the apt was so small but now that I have a much bigger place I was worried I would just start becoming a hoarder (like my dad!). So far so good and i'm just enjoying having the space and not filling it with just 'stuff'.
ReplyDeleteI went from having nothing when I came back from Wales, to an 800 sf house to a 1200 sf house, which is tiny to a lot of people, but big to me. After a year here, I am trying to rework so things are more organized.
DeleteMy husband and I moved from a 3,000-square foot Victorian house in Upstate New York to a 980-square foot rowhouse in Baltimore's Federal Hill neighborhood. So we were forced to do a great deal of down sizing. At first, it really hurt but after a while it was actually cathartic. It's nice to go through life feeling light and care free, no longer weighted down with all those things we used to own and the responsibility of protecting and maintaining them. Life is too short, and you can't take that stuff with you anyway!
ReplyDeleteI didn't know you all were in Fed Hill! We should get together. I love Fed Hill!
DeleteThere is a lot of weight in things. I felt so liberated when I didn't have anything.
Great post!!!!
ReplyDeleteI agree whole heartedly!!
Selling on a regular basis helps with this :)
And like I always say, if you are looking to buy, redecorate, purchase a gift etc. who better to buy from than an experienced treasure huntress like us :)
Good Luck and have a great time with your cousins!!!
Best,
Terri
I've acquired a lot to specifically sell, then lost the momentum. It's back though!
DeleteI do not object to anyone (myself included) having lots of stuff but if you are going to do so, you must be able to care properly for said lots of stuff and appreciate it. My grandmother had to move to a small house when her husband died and she started the habit of rotating her various collections since she had limited display space. You appreciate things more when you don't see them everyday.
ReplyDeleteI was on a housecall yesterday to a client with an overabundance of stuff - three storage lockers packed to the gills of stuff that hadn't seen the light of day in probably two decades - and it was a tedious process as she decided whether or not to keep a $100 set of dishes or leave it in the storage locker (on which she was paying rent, mind you) and on and on.
My mother thinks I am a hoarder (I'm not - she needs to watch a bit of the show to prove my point). I am down to one set of china, so proud!
DeleteBeing a child of only children of parents who were the only members of their generation who cared about and collected old family pieces, I was in line to inherit a ton of stuff, a lot of it valuable, some historically important and some merely cool, but what between a flood, a fire & the occasional break-in--not to mention day-to-day breakage in a house with four boys--there's no longer much left worth inheriting. Fortunately, I've managed to acquire body doubles for a lot of the antique pieces I grew up with, which gives my place the calm, settled feel of a place that's been in the same hands for few generations, even though it's a one-bedroom apartment in the city, not the Italianate brick farmhouse my ancestors built out on the Illinois prairie.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I had one grandmother who was a hoarder and, having that gene, I have to be careful, because I don't want to end up like that, with cabinets crammed full of antique Wedgwood & Coalport wedged in between empty Cool Whip containers, so now that I've gotten the place looking the way I want, there's a moratorium on any more new acquisitions. Actually, that not true. I can buy anything I want, but something has to go to make room for it, and since I don't like getting rid of stuff, it's a standoff: I have reached decorative stasis. Either way, plastic containers are not allowed.
You can have the world's only curated collection of Cool Whip containers!
DeleteI love the description of your family's farm house. Sounds like a treasure... just like you.
xo
On the other hand, the allegedly healthy process of 'decluttering' is not without risk...
ReplyDeleteLove Songs In Age
by Philip Larkin
She kept her songs, they kept so little space,
The covers pleased her:
One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
One marked in circles by a vase of water,
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her,
And coloured, by her daughter -
So they had waited, till, in widowhood
She found them, looking for something else, and stood
Relearning how each frank submissive chord
Had ushered in
Word after sprawling hyphenated word,
And the unfailing sense of being young
Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein
That hidden freshness sung,
That certainty of time laid up in store
As when she played them first. But, even more,
The glare of that much-mentionned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.
{wiping tears} that's lovely.
Delete@Simply Grand -- Thank you for sharing that poem, so perfect for this post.
ReplyDeleteI do have a lot of stuff to divest. I'm thinking of just opening a Dollar Store on my front lawn one Saturday.