Friday, September 01, 2006

I am waging a war on clutter, but with a tear in my eye. With every item I throw over the edge of the giant dumpster at the landfill, I throw away a memory. Every time I make a drop at the Salvation Army, I see the items I leave behind as they were when they were new and sparkling. At one point all of these things I am getting rid of I brought home with a promise. But time passes; tastes change; things break! You can’t keep it all… and remain sane.

Clutter has been a family curse and try as I might, I can’t break the curse. There was a time when I didn’t care, but now I care passionately. When I go, I don’t want those I leave behind to have to spend weeks and months of their lives going through my stuff. I have cleaned up after too many dead people to wish that on anyone. But at the same, time I want the stuff I need to go on living; the stuff that gives me warm fuzzy feelings and good memories; and, of course, the valuable stuff.

I recall when I was a kid that junk accumulated in certain places in the house. There was a large, large closet off the kitchen (not the pantry) where the grownups kept out of season clothes and other stuff they didn’t have a place for. About twice a year, they cleaned it out and gave clothes away – usually to the maid or sometimes to charity.

There was a basement with a dirt floor. It was scary down there and I didn’t go there often. They kept weird stuff down there – I remember a coal scuttle (though they didn’t use coal), some big flower containers like they used to use at funerals, lots of garden tools, wood scraps, bags of fertilizer and more.

The upstairs was divided into four parts, but the biggest room was my father’s office. He was an Amateur Radio Operator and had all sorts of equipment, including transmitters, receivers, microphones and more. He also kept all the back issues of Readers’ Digest and National Geographic.

My grandfather had an office on the front of the house, opposite my father;’s on the back side and a hallway connected them. The room my grandfather used was more in name only. I had a desk and his adding machine and a chair, but he seldom went up there. Mostly my mother and grandmother stashed stuff in that room.

The back porch, which actually was enclosed and had a row of narrow, vertical windows surrounding it, was another messy place. It was where we kept the washer, dryer, freezer and old refrigerator and my mother’s sewing machine. We also kept my grandfather’s chifferobe out there and it was filled with tools, a sprayer for DDT and small cans of paint.

When we moved in 1958, everything had to go. My mother was determined not to transfer any junk to the new house. My father set up a workshop downstairs in the basement, finished half the basement into a “rumpus room” (in Maryland called club basement), and set up my mother with her sewing machine in the rumpus room.

Gradually, the “rumpus room” wasn’t needed for “rumpuses” and became my mother’s sewing room. She bought a huge cabinet to store her patterns in. An old dresser was added to hold the other sewing supplies, and the closet under the stairs became filled with fabric. By the time of my mother’s death thirty years later, the room was overtaken by sewing supplies, etc. I had to get rid of it all. I can barely thread a needle.

On the other side of the wall, my father’s “shop” became more and more filled to capacity. He had laundry baskets full of vacuum tubes, lots of electronic equipment – some antique, some worthless and some valuable. But he also had lots of transmitters, resistors, and capacitors – all referred to by the female members of the family as “electronic doohickies.” Some of this stuff found its way into my husband's "shop."

When he sold the house the year after my mother died, everything had to go. That’s when I had to come in a do the really tough stuff and part with decades of memories. But I did what I had to do.

Meanwhile, of course, I had my own home and my own growing collection of stuff. I married an electronics engineer, so, of course, he had the requisite electronic “doohickies.”

When we first got married we had a small two-bedroom apartment. Steve used the second bedroom as a “shop.” I didn’t mind really – it was what I was accustomed to after all.

I guess there are men who don’t collect electronic parts, solder things together, or have boxes of wire. But my father did, my husband does and so does our son. Could it be genetic? But I digress!

When we moved to California in 1971, we bought a four bedroom house. Steve had one bedroom as his “shop” and since we had a garage, we managed to fill it with everything but our cars. When we moved to Maryland in 1976, we got rid of a lot of stuff, but the Air Force would move whatever we had, so it was simpler to hold onto stuff than to get rid of it.

Our Maryland house had only three bedrooms, but it had a full basement. There was a room my husband could use as an office and another large area where he could have a “shop.” The “shop” was where he did electronics and woodworking – not a great combination. We had grand designs to make the basement into something nice and even had several rooms down there that could be used for something. As it turned out, only one room really had much of a life as my office. When we moved out, however, we cleaned out the whole area and had it all redone. It looked great when we left it.

When we moved in 1992, we got rid of loads of stuff. I filled up the large family room with piles –keep, throw away and donate. What we kept, we moved into our new house and we were very selective about what we kept. And for a few years, we were winning the battle against clutter. We purposely went ahead and finished the basement so that it would be easier to keep it nice. Nice theory!

Now here we are in 2006, and the clutter is trying to win again. My husband has an office, an electronics shop and a workshop, plus a furnace room for stuff. They are all filled with stuff that I cannot throw away. I can’t because I promised him that I wouldn’t mess with his stuff. And for him these are precious items.

Meanwhile, I have decided to be totally ruthless with the “shared” areas of the house as well as my own personal spaces. My cleaning lady is my partner in crime. We cleaned out my closet and got rid of dozens of bags of worn out, out of style, non-fitting, or otherwise objectionable clothes, shoes and purses. We attacked the pantry, the large finished basement room, the basement storage room, my office, and various closets. I feel very virtuous, if not exhausted. At last I am winning over the clutter.

I do worry about the unabated clutter in areas of the house beyond my control. Will they somehow spill over into my newly liberated areas? Can I really expect to stop clutter creep? Not really, but I can hope!

My instinct used to be “save it – you might need it later.” Now my instinct is “trash it or give it away – later is too vague to mean anything to me.” If I need it later, I probably wouldn’t know where to find it anyway.

And I guess that brings me to the point, if there is one. Saving stuff only makes sense if you can find it when you need it. Clearly there is trash and trash should be thrown away. There is not going to be “better time” to get rid of trash. Some things should be kept because they are very special. Other things are useful for someone, but not for me –so they should be donated. And for those things that are useful – the useful time better be in the foreseeable future! Otherwise, out they go! Enough is enough!!!

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