Stuff and Nonsense

There is almost a feeling of power in buying and owning something, and a sort of rush of euphoria involved in obtaining, collecting or hoarding things. I say that because I have felt, at least to some degree, this rush of which I speak. I buy an article of clothing or a new appliance, and I walk around in a giddy mood the rest of the day. This may be why there are so many women who make shopping a hobby. They just want to feel that giddy feeling more often. But there is a problem, and it is that a person can have too much stuff.

I think about my own home. When I walk into my entry, especially in the winter, I see a pile of coats hung on the banister. (No child of mine ever willingly hung their coat in the closet.) So, I go to the closet to hang some coats and I find that the closet is already full of coats and that no more will fit unless I pile them on the floor. Obviously, we have plenty of coats. But does that stop me when, on my daughter's birthday, we are shopping and I see a coat that exactly suits her and I decide to buy it for her? No, I just go ahead and buy it anyway. Then, when I'm hanging up coats again, I realize that we already have too many coats, and I wonder what I was thinking!

The quick answer to this dilemma is to pack up a few of the extra coats that are laying around and send them to the thrift store. My closet looks better and we aren't tripping over so many coats. Now, if coats were my only problem, that would be OK. But with my very large family we have coats, dresses, hats, scarves, shirts, shoes, books, toys, computers, and the list goes on and on. The longer I have lived, the more I have suffered from, and as a result have tried to study, this problem.

My mother had this problem, and she had just as many children as I do. My father used to exclaim in exasperation that our house was being overrun by stuff. We had a large family and a not-so-large house. It was adequate but not roomy, so when the stuff started piling up, there was just no place to go with it. My father had the idea that he would just hire a huge dump truck, shovel out the excess stuff and haul it to the dump. Mother would cry and complain until the status quo had been restored and we went on, business as usual. But it didn't solve the problem.

Mother was raised during the Depression. She was born in a tiny hut the size of my entry and spent her youth living in conditions that were reminiscent of “Little House on the Prairie”. They had next to nothing for so long that it became a way of life. Then came modern convenience and with it the shopping mania. After living so long with nothing she became almost paranoid of losing what she had. Consequently, everything that came into the house, stayed in the house, unless one of us could secretly sneak it out. Mother had, and still has a stack of Coolwhip containers that looks like the leaning tower of Pisa. She has a large container full of dead batteries. She has mountains of magazines, books, newspapers, obituaries, pictures, clothes, bedding, and toys that go back fifty or sixty years, none of which is ever moved or used. Every cup, trinket, knick-knack or gift she has ever received has been laid by somewhere in the house. It was a “We-might-need-this-some-day” way of life and somehow, even with all the abundance, my mother is still living in it.

I, on the other hand, was not raised in the Depression, unless you can call the “Oil Crisis” of the 70's a depression. We never had it easy but we never had it really hard either. I don't feel a compelling urge to keep every obscure bottle that comes into my kitchen, nor do I keep clothes in my closet that I wore when I got married. I don't use soap, shampoo, lotion, cream, butter, and other 'luxuries' with the frugality of a prison inmate, and I don't give lectures to my children about all the things they have that I never dreamed of having. And yet, I still have clutter that would rival my mother's piles any day.

Although the causes are different, the disease is the same. She could not let the stuff go, and I cannot keep the stuff out. And the problem is that the 'stuff' almost has a life of it's own. Once you own something it is next to impossible to part with it. If someone gave it to you, it is even more difficult to get rid of, and if you inherited it, you might as well face it, you will never see the back of it. Such is the disease of stuff. It is now so easy and affordable to get more stuff, that I cannot keep up with just the things that people give us, not to mention all the stuff we buy ourselves because we 'need' it . I must take a thrift store run almost weekly, just to keep from being buried! And the sad part is that most people pay their hard-earned money for that stuff, or they even go into debt for it, only to discover later that the stuff didn't make them happy, that convenience isn't all it's cracked up to be, that making-do is better that making payments and that going without is far better than going into debt.

I don't know what my mother is going to do with all her stuff. I keep telling her that she can't take it with her when she leaves this world, and that I'm not really excited about having all those old magazines and newspapers. But that's her problem. I've got problems of my own. I keep thinking that I am dejunking, and maybe I am, but almost by magic, it seems that every time I get rid of something, something else takes it's place. The only permanent solution would be to leave everything behind, and start with nothing in a place where you had to make everything for yourself or go without. We would have a lot less stuff, and we would be a lot more grateful for what we do have. But if anyone ever found out what you were doing, they would, out of pity, immediately send you a truck-load of stuff to fill up your space. Personally, I think I would prefer the space.