ONE DAY, as a friend was sorting through her things, she pointed to a pot and said, “That doesn’t belong to me anymore.” It wasn’t that someone else was about to take possession of it. She simply no longer felt ownership. She didn’t feel connected to it. It didn’t fit her life.
Most of us would have said of an unwanted item, “I don’t want/need that anymore.” Because our relationship to our stuff is different. Maybe it’s better not to feel so attached to objects. Or, maybe it’s better to own only those things with which we feel some kind of bond. This goes back to the popular William Morris quote:
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
At the time we got them nearly everything we acquired felt beautiful or useful or both. But somewhere along the line many of the beautiful and useful things become just… stuff. A mental shift occurred. Those formerly delightful and utilitarian objects now just share space with us. They have their own lives, we have ours. They don’t belong to us anymore, because we don’t even think about them. Until it’s time to move. Or until the hoarder intervention people show up.
I have a game/test I offer those struggling with downsizing. It’s mostly a joke if you’re not having trouble paring down your possessions, and mostly serious if downsizing is the major barrier on your road to living on the road. Here it is:
• A helper looks in a drawer, a cupboard, a closet, a box, a storage unit or whatever while you stand aside, not looking.
• The helper asks, “What is in here?”
• You get to keep only the things you correctly identify.
This game is based on my belief we have a lot of things we’ve forgotten about because they’re not really part of our life anymore. They are the same objects but we are not the same person. We have moved on. Or we’re trying to.
I have many many things that don’t belong to me any more, my struggle is what to do with them.
It would be easy to say “give them to somebody that wants them” but that isn’t easy to do, finding those people and distributing the stuff consumes time I would rather spend doing something else.
I get rid of a lot of things on my local Buy Nothing group.
I hadn’t heard of that before, it looks interesting. Unfortunately the nearest one to me is about 150 miles away. I don’t want to add to my mental clutter by trying to start one locally!
Thank you so much for this, AL.
I have this friend who kept saying, “There is more to family than a bunch of expensive paintings of stern looking old people you don’t recognize and leftover silverware from marriages that didn’t work out.”
I couldn’t understand what he meant because that’s a fairly accurate description of the contents of my storage unit.
But they’ve got eBay flippers now who can get rid of that stuff for you. Everybody’s great-grandmother stitched a beautiful quilt while Laura Ingalls Wilder was stitching her nine patch quilt. Everybody’s grandmother would have could have should have been the greatest poet to come out of the US in the entire 20th century if 1929 hadn’t happened.
But it did.
And when I look into the trusting eyes of my furbabies, I know that they can never be replaced. My time here on Earth is precious and it is coming to an end.
I think I’m starting to understand what my friend means.
Hope to see you all in Quartzsite next weekish, Nomad family.
Getting rid of stuff was the hardest thing to do.
“Too much stuff” is still a problem.
I no longer concern myself with finding just the right person for just the right thing when giving my stuff away. I just take it in boxes and bags to the thrift store that I feel will get the most good and $$ from it (Animal Humane in my case). They can sort it out, slap a price tag on it, and the proceeds feed the animals at the shelter.
I love your new game! It makes so much sense to me. I wonder if I can get my husband to play it?
Oh, well. I just asked him to name what’s in a particular drawer and he said, “Stuff.” I expected him to say something like, “Cables and connectors,” but he didn’t even get that specific.
Stuffocation! If for no other reason than I don’t want a bunch of crap for my kids to have to sort through when I’m gone, then I need to get busy. I did empty my storage unit a few month back, now it’s time to pare down my 2 bedroom MH. Glad I don’t have a garage lol.
Another excellent write-up Al, thank you. Thank you also for sharing your game with us. I will follow through on this by making a list of what I recall to be in that box, cupboard or closet, & see how many items do not belong to me anymore! As Glinda says, I just take everything to a thrift store that I support & give the opportunity to other folks to enjoy them.
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to you Al, Bob & everyone!?
I love this. After living in my camper for several months, I needed to move back into an apartment while I underwent some medical stuff. I am planning to once again buy a RV and get back out on the road. I made an observation that anything with a surface will collect “stuff”. To keep myself downsized, I intentionally refused to buy any furniture that has a surface. I have no dining room furniture, in fact no tables at all. Next to my recliner is an old kitty litter container that holds my coffee cup and TV remote. It is too small to hold anything else, but that doesn’t stop me from trying — tweezers, nail polish, and chapstick always seem to work their way back to it. This drives my visiting family members crazy. They tell me I need to get some furniture. But I have everything I have needed for the past 8 years. I have two bookshelves. One is full of books – no room for anything else. The other is full of my rock collection, and on top is my stereoscope. No room for anything else… so how did that candle get there? It is easier to stay rid of stuff if you have no room to put it. My plan is to downsize yet again into an RV, hopefully in June. Then I can see you all next winter in Quartzsite! Merry Christmas to all of you. Be safe and stay healthy.
There’s an old saying: Clutter expands to fill all available surfaces. I suspect the stuff replicates while we’re sleeping.