Stuff

I was inspired by Suzanne Hailey. PNN. to share this rather old essay with you. It has been popular on radio, at my readings and in the memoir in which it is published. I maintain it is because everybody either has been there, or knows they must eventually go there. Which are you?

STUFF

In one of his essays, E. B. White speaks of the acquisition of things: “A home is like a reservoir equipped with a check valve: the valve permits influx but prevents outflow.” That was on my mind often as I pared down to smaller quarters for the second time in a dozen years. The most dramatic of the moves–-many  years before--was from a five-bedroom house with an unusual amount of storage space, to a one-bedroom apartment. It took me a year to get rid of enough “stuff,” many years’ accumulation, to fit into that apartment. The saving grace there, besides its general spaciousness, was the presence of a large walk-in storeroom.
    I’m not quite ready to live out of a backpack, but I am getting down to basics--having carried out literally hundreds of bags of stuff with each move. The first time, the cast-offs included many years’ issues of  “The Carolina Israelite,” items left behind by my grown kids and forty roomers, a garage full of tools and household supplies, boxes of sewing and crazy-quilt fabrics, crafts materials, and rooms full of furniture.
    Unfortunately, my limited space in the apartment did not allow me to enlist the kind of help that I had in clearing out the big house. Then about sixty people came to my “house-cooling” under strict orders not to bring  a gift, but rather to be prepared to take something away with them when they left. That they did, in great good spirits, after taking turns going through one room piled high with giveaways. Many years later, friends still talk about my house-cooling.
    But a lot can accrue in twelve years, especially when one is addicted to thrift shops, garage sales and used-book stores. I often wondered, as I came in from the car laden with bags of groceries or weighed down with stuff, what must go through my neighbors’ minds, “where does it all go--how can she fit it all in--how can one person consume that much food?”
    The second time, the sweep became more intense, and I got rid of things dear to me but impossible to fit into my even-smaller space. Heirloom dishes,  glassware, and linens were given to my offspring; a large collection of antique hymnals went to a folk singer friend, and a huge assemblage of teaching aids--children’s music and craft books, puppets, and musical instruments--found various loving homes. I couldn’t bear to part with the stuffed toys, so they live in a friend’s basement, coming out only for Christmas.
    There is a wonderful cleansing effect from simplification, from the weeding out of non-essential items. It reminds us which things are precious and important. The possessions left after this process seem more dear, somehow. The photo albums, music records and tapes, videos, quilts and sweaters handmade by my mother, an impressive egg collection, writing and photography gear, and boxes of memorabilia--love letters, fan letters, newspaper clippings, my kids’ and friends’ love-notes--all document a long, vital life.
    The proliferation of garage sales and flea markets leads me to believe that all we’re doing is exchanging our stuff. The proliferation of personal storage rental units suggests  that the situation is out of hand--if you can’t get all your stuff in your own house, do you really need it? Maybe I am turning into a curmudgeon from reading too much Andy Rooney, but I remember when an old Sears Roebuck catalog, to be cut up into paper dolls, provided an entire winter’s entertainment for a little girl. There was a sweetness to the simplicity of that life. The world may never be able to recapture it, but I’m trying.