The War on Stuff

Earlier this year I committed to reducing my clutter, thanks to the introduction by my sister to the show "Clean House." She was going to nominate me for the show, but I decided to take matters into my own hands first. While it might be kind of fun to have a TV show come in and document my compulsive hoarding issue and give me a new lease on life by showing me the way of the cleanly and well-organized, I didn't think I could actually wait a year for the whole process to come to fruition. I also wasn't keen on the idea that the whole world would get a bird's-eye view of my clusterfuck of a living space. It's...well, it's embarrassing. I will say, however, that watching the show has opened my eyes to one oft-forgotten fact: I am not the only one who struggles with this thing.

So...the first step, I decided, was to start purging - also known as "Operation Project Toss," sort of my own mini-version of "Clean House." This is not the first version of said operation (as you may well know if you've been a part of my life for any length of time) but it's definitely the most serious. It's a tough battle to wage, this battle against Stuff, since it requires a lot of letting go and overriding of emotions, but I entered into it with the best intentions and a fair amount of aplomb, and have spent the year fighting the good fight. The fight has since escalated into a full-blown war, complete with trenches, foxholes, and a few allies called in for reinforcement. One yard sale, a couple good-sized donations to charity, and several ebay auctions later, I’m winning. I think. But it’s a slippery slope, indeed.

It's unbelievable how much crap I've accumulated in the six-plus years I've been in this house. As someone who spent ages 18 to 32 moving every couple of years and still had the uncanny ability to accumulate junk, one can only imagine the havoc wreaked in six years. I mean, it's really astonishing.

See, I like Stuff. No - I love Stuff. I’m rather addicted to owning Stuff, in fact. However as a compulsive hoarder, I have a tendency to let the Stuff own me. It grows and reproduces. Little piles creep over to other little piles, which soon spend the night together and spawn more little piles. Soon these little piles grow up and form giant communes of piles. I don’t know what to do with all of it, and usually end up walking away in defeat, resolving to deal with it some other time as I climb over more stuff just to go to the bathroom.

My point? I have come to the conclusion that there can be no more extraneous Stuff. I’ve put a moratorium on Stuff. I have set very specific guidelines about what can and cannot come into this house. I have strict policies regarding the intake of Stuff (i.e. nothing comes in unless something goes out). In the past I have been an avid collector of Stuff, but at this point in my life, as I look toward potentially downsizing my life in a move (or just in an attempt to preserve what shred of sanity remains in my head), I have to put my foot down.

Every year my mother says, "This is going to be a lean Christmas!" Every year I respond, "That's fine, Mom. I don't want a lot of things anyway." Every year I put together a wittily-worded, graphically-enhanced list of things I want and/or need. And while it's never a particularly Stuff-heavy list, I nevertheless always end up on Christmas morning with a bunch of Stuff. Apparently my mother's idea of "lean Christmas" is different from mine. This year, she's getting a list with specific instructions, worded as gently as I know how, to knock it off with the Stuff. I understand that in my family Christmas is all about the obscene amount of gifts lining the walls and stacked to the ceiling on Christmas morning, but as I've gotten older (and as new little members are added) I take less joy in ripping open package after package, and instead derive most of my holiday cheer from sipping coffee, eating cinnamon rolls, watching snow fall, and lounging in my pajamas with my family.

But I digress. Must stop blogging and resume purging (and painting and ripping up carpet, etc). I will be back with updates as they come. In the meantime, enjoy this lovely photo of approximately 80 pounds of my boxed up, unwanted Stuff.