Stuff Rules--NOT

Ever since I returned from Seattle and from my parent's giant PARE-DOWN, I've had little patience for what seems like a tottering mountain of stuff falling down around our ears. I constantly get rid of things--there's always a bag filling on the back porch bound for Cherry Door Charity or Hidden Treasures (how hidden are your treasures? I'm trying to learn how to see the treasures and the trash through all the familiarity). I've been through the house, slipping things away into bags and trash cans (before the girls see it and decide they truly want that precious toy they've played with once or twice and not more). I had the feeling that our children had so much that they had no idea what to do with it all. And it's true--the less they have, the better and more happily they play. There's space suddenly.

"I will not be overcome!" I declared to Martin the other day. "I have to free myself from the tyranny of STUFF!" Right on, Martin says, but it's hard to keep up the pace on your own. You have to help me, I finally told him. So he sat himself down and we began in the sunroom.

"What's that?" he'd say, and I would pull something off a shelf, some boxes or maybe that tarnished silver tray I thought was so much fun when I bought it. "What is that?" he'd say, and I'd mumble some excuse for its existence in our house. "Get rid of it," he'd continue, with barely a shrug. "Really? My silver tray?" Suddenly: what's the significance of this silver tray? Zero significance. Bing! Bing! Bing! On goes the light. "Okay," I'd agree happily as I took it to a gathering place on the dining room table.

Out it goes! The more I do this sort of thing, the easier it gets to do. In fact, it's intoxicating to let go of all this excess. There's a funny sort of barrier that I have to get through--it's the barrier of thinking I care about something, about feeling owned partially by that thing--and then declaring my freedom. My dominance over that stupid silver tray. Out it goes.

I had a bout of this sort of freedom in odd circumstances at my parent's house. They went off to church and I stayed home with the masses of pictures and artwork they owned, faced with a tiny condo and artwork from Africa (very graphic), Asia (intricate, whimsical), and endless what-nots from around the world. And this was after two sortings that had squeezed the juice out of their metaphorical suburban orange and into a little distilled town existence--zest--the essence of their life's possessions. It was a quandary, though, how to make what was left over all work together. I was trying but I was somewhat aware it was a losing battle, and sure enough my mother breezed in from church and pooh-poohed my efforts. Well, this made me (slightly sleep-deprived, no shower) RATHER grumpy, and so she laughed and suggested we all stop and have a glass of wine.

And this is where things went a little balmy, for me at least. The wine made my mother jolly and relaxed. The wine made me aggressive and impatient with personal kindness. Just go through the box of pictures, my mother said, and let's get the ones out that we don't want. Nuff said, mama, watch me fly through this box, throwing pictures here and thereI never did like this one, etc, out, out, out! It was liberating and it liberated us all (my mother was not offended--she cheered me on, though she did warn me not to throw quite so heedlessly) from another meaningless (maybe meaningful once but suddenly not so much anymore) box of STUFF.

This, and my experience with my own house, has set me wondering about the pitfalls of capitalism--if we've got this much and we're a young family who has generally moved once every year or two, how much junk must everyone on my block have? In my town? In this country, for heaven's sakes? How many mountains could we fill with endless, endless, endless stuff??? And why do I feel as if I really need it, as if I need two or three sets of dishes and a room full of toys for my children, when they are perfectly content with a piece of paper and a box of crayons?

I remember my mother giving away our curtains from our windows to a guest who expressed admiration. You like em? Well, take em? I remember feeling personally wounded and rather panicked that she gave away her curtains with such alacrity. But why? It's just a thing, after all, my mother would say. Break the china in the fireplace! They're just things after all!

When we moved every year, there was a perfect opportunity for an intense clear-out. But when we're beginning your third year in the same place--oh, beware. Martin and I took out our kitchen table the other day after I counted up our tables and realized we had an embarrasing lot of tables and that we could use our porch table in our kitchen (brain wave comes every so often to this brocolli-head). As we're hauling out this antique table to the curb, we start second-guessing ourselves. Wow, it's really built nicely. Look at the notched work. It resided in my great-aunt's house for a lifetime, and it's still kicking. Why's it so heavy? Because it's well made, Martin hisses at me as we lug it down our porch stairs and on to the side of the road. I think this is a mistake, he says at one point. But then we really look at it and decide objectively, it is ugly. We don't like it; we aren't about to refinish its bizzare greenish stain; and chances are very good that now it's out of our house, we won't miss it in the least.

Why, why, why, am I holding on so tenaciously to mismatched socks?

I'm doing better, but it's a challenge, I tell you. Simple living? I don't even understand, really, how we've amassed so much. It comes in so fecklessly, so innocently, and then it puts down its little insidious roots in our lives. Warning! Invasive!

I will free myself! I will be free of this bizarre dependence on meaningless inanimate objects!