Coming Unmoored

“Do not keep anything in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
–William Morris

A few months back while I was still soul-searching on where I wanted to go with my life, I became very clear on one point–I currently own too damn much stuff. (And that was before I decided to move into a much smaller place than where I am currently.)

I’ve always been a homebody, but I don’t like clutter. However, between the 60+ hour work weeks and even less sane relationships I’ve had in the last five years, I really haven’t been keeping tabs on all the stuff I’ve been acquiring. Moreover, recently, I seem to have been accumulating art supplies and fencing gear at an exponential rate.

When I moved from Phoenix to Tucson, I was so wiped out from my job that I just paid movers to throw everything in boxes and move it south for me. They took me literally at “everything”. When I unpacked on the other end, I discovered things like my paper bag of recyclables and the toilet paper roll with four sheets left. At that point, I weeded through my possessions only to the extent of stashing them wherever I could in our very large house. We had enough space that it was easy to ignore the fact that we had a lot of unnecessary stuff.

And then when I separated from David it was pretty much a “grab and run” operation so I didn’t streamline anything, there, either. A year later, I still haven’t recovered from the chaos of my move. My house is cluttered and my studio out back is a disaster area. In fact, I’ve been in happy denial about there being another building out back for a couple of blissful months, now.

For whatever reason, about three months ago, my inner Virgo finally woke up from her long, enchanted slumber and she’s not at all amused by the collection of detritus she discovered surrounding her. Her castle is shambles and someone has clearly not being paying the gardener.

So I find myself now at war with stuff. Well, “war” may be too strong of a description. It’s more like I’ve been having an “it’s-not-you-it’s-me” style of break-up with a lot of my possessions.

Starting a few months back, books like Walden started coming down off my shelves after years of being ignored and I found myself daydreaming about running away to some sort of Japanese-minimalist house with 500 square feet and 10 total objects inside. You know, the kind of place where an immaculate white futon can serve as your couch, your bed, and it cooks frozen dinners in under 2 minutes. The kind of place so streamlined and economically brilliant in its design that it makes IKEA execs lose sleep at night. That kind of thing. (In retrospect, I guess my little floating home is not too far off from that.)

Where the daydreamed morphed into is action was that I slowly started working room-by-room through my house and tried to keep only the things that: 1) I have used in the last year or 2) which give me pleasure to currently possess. Not what used to give me pleasure at some other point in my life. But what does right here and now. That’s proven to be a tough one to get honest about.

Those guidelines eliminate an awful lot of stuff, including, but certainly not limited to: gifts I really don’t like but feel guilty getting rid of because…well…they were gifts; those jeans I’d look great in if only I could lose those last 5 pounds; a surprising number of Hallmark cards from ex-boyfriends and roommates; supplies for those arts projects I’m REALLY going to get around to trying at some point.

To-date, it been a pretty slow process wading through stuff, made even slower by the fact that I’ve been trying very hard not to simply contribute a bunch of stuff to a landfill somewhere. I’ve been selling or Freecycling off whatever I can. Having to sort through rooms of books and CD’s isn’t making things go any quicker, either. Deciding what books I no longer need is about as easy as chopping off my own fingers. With a spoon.

With the purchase of my new place and upcoming move, it looks like I’m going to have to get more ruthless and efficient in finishing my process of decluttering. Stayed tuned…

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