My Story of Stuff

I have been looking around my house with a new lens. We're getting closer and closer to the move and I'm astounded by how many objects there are, and how dominated I feel by them.

Growing up we moved quite a few times, and I remember stuff getting "lost in the move" or broken by movers. I also remember how comforting it was to see the same stuff in a new place. I was the oldest, so I mostly got new stuff, but I got some hand-me-downs from older cousins. One set of grandparents was always trying to give us stuff... I think that grandma bought most of my clothes until I was old enough to know that Healthtex clothes are not hip... and to wonder why the word "Health" was in the brand name. In fact, I have two parcheesi sets from the 50's that that grandfather gave to me (and that I carried on a plane!) in my closet right now. When I visited them I took pictures of some of their stuff, the fruit bowl, and the weird statuettes that had been in the same places for my entire life. I heard often from my family that my other grandparents had gotten rid of so much of their good stuff. They didn't save anything for their children, like furniture, cars, trucks, a beach house. In fact that grandfather gave away my mother's chickens by accident... somebody asked about them, and he had no idea that his teenage daughter even HAD chickens, so he gave them away without asking. On the other hand, that grandmother was a knitter. Her gifts were afghans, pajamas, sweaters and scarves and slippers. I still have a sweater that she made for my mother. Different people, different times, different stuff.

When Z and I moved here, we had a huge truck and we drove a LOT of stuff here. I feel like I spend some time every day commenting on my stuff without actually picking any of it up and DOING anything about it. (Except books. Z and I have a box for keeping books and a box for getting rid of books. Every so often, one of us will pick up a book and ask the other one "Keep this one?" or "You don't want this one do you?" This is fun, and we've agreed completely so far.)

I've got clothes of course. I buy almost all of my clothes at the Goodwill, which is great; it's reusing, it's cheaper, it's around the corner, I'm not supporting sweatshops, or box stores. I feel really good about it. On the other hand, they tend to fall apart a little more quickly (because they're older) and I think I'm more likely to "settle" for clothes that don't quite fit or aren't just right, so they cycle back to the goodwill, and I tend to be discontent. I'm not crazy about boxing up tons of "Not-quite-right" clothes and paying to ship them across the country. In any case, I've had an annual clothing swap that's coming up in a couple of weeks, so that's one solution to that stuff.

I've got wedding gifts. Most of the beautiful special stuff that Zak and I will carry across the country again are wedding gifts. After our wedding, in Rhode Island, we drove a borrowed Eurovan across the country. We carefully packed our gifts into its small trunk. At one point we accidentally killed the battery by leaving the DVD player on (it was a SWEET Eurovan... thank you Mag) and had to jump it. We thought that the battery was in the back (it actually had two) so, while I fetched someone to help us, Z carefully removed our treasures and set them on a picnic table in an RV park. It felt really wonderful, looking at them all laid out completely out of context like that. The only gifts we won't cart back will be some of our beautiful dishes that have broken over the years. (I admit, we've been saving the pieces in a box, because Peter's Pots, where our dishes were made has a butter fingers day. If you bring in the pieces of a broken piece, you can replace it at a discount! I have no idea if the box of pottery shards will make it to Boston.)

I've got technology... I've got yarn... and books... and old papers and STUFF. I'm actually frozen when I think about how to move or sell or pack all this crap that's hemming me in. (As soon as I'm done with this blog, I've got to spend 15 minutes in the office trying to get a handle on the mountain of papers and yarn on and around my desk that has exiled me and the laptop to the living room.) Occasionally, I look beside my bed, or in the office and I think of a film I watched called Possessed by Martin Hampton. It's a documentary about four hoarders, and it's very startling and sharp and disturbing. The whole video is available if you follow that link, and it's excellent... like any mental illness, it's easy to see the same, if less dire, habits of thought and fear in anyone that are displayed in the film.

Once I met a guy and visited him on his boat where he lived and I was startled by how free and happy I imagined I could be on a boat. "Check it out." I thought. "This guy has only a little bit of crap. He basically could NAME every object that he owns. That's awesome." I imagined how fantastic I would feel if I got rid of all my stuff. Zak was away and I came home and looked around our house and found myself only attached to SOME of our stuff. I met a woman on retreat who lived on a boat. We talked about how free she felt with fewer possessions. I told her that I imagined that it would be hard to get rid of books. She blushed and told me about when her husband built them each a bookshelf, and announced that this was all they got. She asked for a second shelf, which he fit in someplace else, and then still ended up storing some books with her sister.

Recently I helped some dear friends pack up their apartment and in lifting all of their stuff, felt miraculously less and LESS attached to all the things I have with every trip up and down the steps. On the other hand, I've been thinking hard about buying another bike (my old one doesn't really fit me) and it's been very tempting to buy one that's brand new.

Sitting in the sun on our deck w/ Z, I looked lovingly at the prayer flags that I hung the first day we lived here, five years ago. They are so beautifully faded and destroyed, worn to transparent colorful bits with gossamer strings hanging from them. I asked Z... what should we do? Should we leave them (probably to be taken down and discarded by the landlord or the next tenants?) Should we take them down and bring them with us? That does'nt feel right at all. Maybe take them down and bury them in the yard, or do some other kind of ritual? We put off deciding. We are very accomplished at putting off deciding.

Yesterday, our training at work began by watching a video called The Story of Stuff. It's a brilliant 20 minute film describing how stuff is made, sold and then discarded. It discusses planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence in depth and where they entered our design world and how it's changed our relationship to stuff. Please take some time to watch it, it's really fantastic and compelling. It's a little hard, in that An Inconvenient Truth way, but that's because it asks us to look at a bigger picture, which I'm trying to do a little every day anyway. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure where The Story of Stuff has pushed me. (At work, a friend and I are going to gather a Zero-Waste Lunch discussion group of teachers and parents. This makes me feel a little like a super hero.) I'll have to keep mulling to discover exactly how I'll shift my own personal life from this film.

I'm sure that it'll definitely impact me as I consider how much stuff to keep, what to fix, what to get rid of, etc. Now I'll wash some stuff, and recycle some stuff, organize some stuff and try to change my relationship to other stuff. What do you think about your stuff?