Tag Archives: stuff

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I keep coming back to stuff

When I started this blog I spoke a lot about my journey to rid myself of my excess of stuff so I could “get somewhere.”

I had sold my successful business that I’d opened and run for nearly 18 years with no idea what I was going to do next. I only knew that whatever was next for me – I couldn’t do it with all this stuff! I couldn’t get where I wanted to be and drag all this stuff with me.

Flash forward a bunch of years. I got rid of a lot of my possessions, created a career whereby I help others do the same. Took a longed for road trip of just over 15,000 miles (around the US – by myself!) and came home from that road trip ready to pack up my home and move on from the life I’d been living. I still didn’t know what I was moving towards, I just knew that I was ready.

Then I met a high school sweetheart and fell in love.

I packed up my house alright, I left behind the life I’d been living and I moved my (now much fewer) possessions into his home. Just about 20 minutes from where I’d owned my business all those years.

I began to work on my writing, (it’s what I do, it’s who I am, and I never quite stop doing it,) with a little Personal Organizing and decluttering on the side.

That’s when I started getting into Life Coaching.

I had become living proof that you can get where, and do what, you want in life. You are never stuck. It’s just a matter of finding your way from where you are.

Flash forward another couple of years, (Holy moly how time flies!)

I’m not at all unhappy with my life at the moment.

I life coach, and I help people declutter to find their way to the life they want. I write and have found my way to my first big book project. I’ve made new connections and I enjoy the space where I reside.

My sweetie isn’t so much into decluttering.

He likes to buy stuff. He likes to keep stuff.

And while I’m not unhappy with the life we share here, I want more.

Life is short – yes?

And I keep coming back to stuff.

I think there’s too much stuff in this house.

I feel like it is holding he and I back from the life we both say we want.

Decluttering still seems all the rage. There are always books coming out about the joys of it or the how to of it. I’m reading yet another new and hot one now.

(Someday I hope I’ll write one.)

But it’s making me itch.

It’s making me itch to get rid of the old china hutch in the spare room (He doesn’t love it but it belonged to his mother.) It’s making me itch to get rid of the twenty cookbooks I kept when I first downsized from 80 or so that I used to own. It’s making me want to get rid of the 15 tiny decorative dishes, trays, and bowls both he and I seem to adore. Sure they are pretty and all but they are a pain to keep dusted and I don’t think they are adding much to my life. He, of course, doesn’t agree. He thinks they are tiny, barely take up any room, aren’t unpleasant, aren’t in the way and that there is no reason to get rid of them.

I keep coming back to stuff.

I have too much stuff.

I am surrounded by too much stuff.

Too much stuff gets in the way of moving forward.

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Protected: I damn sure knew what I didn’t want.

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I used to make lists of the things I’d keep

I used to make lists of the things I’d keep, long before I started getting rid of things.

In an effort to learn what mattered to me I’d stare out the window, look at nothing in my spaces, and think – what’s here – and what would come with me if I could grab 100 things?

I’d look around my room, my office, the living room and kitchen, but only in my mind’s eye.

What do I see – what’s in that room that is important enough that it makes up a feature of my memory of that room?

 

Now I live at My Love’s house.

And a couple years ago I got rid of most of my stuff. (I did not consult the lists as I went through things.)

I suspect I kept most of the things that ever got on a list.

And now that stuff is here, integrated with his treasures and tchotchkes, and some little of it is in boxes in storage. The stuff that’s here is important when I notice it – my stuff anyway. I can’t speak to the importance of his Turkish Tea Set. But I cannot easily look through the rooms in my mind’s eye.

 

My crystal ball is on a small shelf next to a nondescript window in the bedroom, while it sat most of its life on the center of my headboard(s). Last week as Voodoo sat on the window perch Scott said “She looks like she’s looking into the crystal ball.” And I hadn’t SEEN the crystal ball in months. Never notice it. Would it have made a mind’s-eye list of stuff in the bedroom if I made that list today?

So is it still important?

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What Not To Wear

What’s in your closet? Do you even know?

I’m trying to get a handle on the process I went through – after the fact.

Having determined that I was weighed down by entirely too much of everything I set about to remedy this. I took the first step with books. At around the same time I took steps in the clothing department – an area I believe most of us Americans (especially women) experience extreme excess.

I decided that the best way to get a handle on what clothes I owned vs. what clothes I wear was to stop doing laundry. Seriously.

The goal was to wear everything in my closet and drawers. Obviously when one stops doing laundry the favorite clothes are gone in 10 days or two weeks. Then we move into the second level of clothes one likes. After 5 weeks or so it begins to get a little desperate (and I must point out that there IS a need to do a little load here and there of essentials – read: bras and towels in my case.) After a couple more days (or weeks) one gets down to only the clothes one wouldn’t be caught dead actually wearing. Best just to let those go – face it, you’re REALLY not going to wear any of it. That was kind of easy – this stuff was garbage.

It’s hard for me to find clothes I actually like, ergo it’s hard for me to get rid of clothes once I own them. After the no-laundry experiment, once I’d washed everything and put it all back in an impressively organized manner, I looked at it all again. There’s some stuff I might be able to do without. So I took some things and I removed them – at least temporarily; put them in a big plastic crate and hid them away. I figured that if I don’t go looking for them, don’t miss them, then I don’t REALLY need them. It was late winter, so I focused on spring and summer clothes. I filled a crate and stashed it in the back of my closet.

There was a time or two when I wanted a particular shirt or pair of pants, couldn’t find them, and went into the crate. There they were, so they went back into rotation. While I might paw through the crate looking for a particular something, I made great efforts to pay no attention to what else was in there.

Six months later I looked in the crate, this time to SEE what was there. Any of those spring and summer clothes I’d not needed or gone hunting for should be considered unnecessary. But I was realistic too. If there was something in there that I’d buy right this minute if I saw it on a rack at the consignment store, I let that slip back into the closet. Everything else went to the consignment store if they’d take it and to Goodwill if they didn’t.

I refilled the crate with things I might not miss and that currently sits in the back of my closet again. The whole thing is a process – anyone who tells you it can be done in a weekend or a month is full of it.

After the great no-laundry experiment and after ditching at least 2 plastic bags full of clothes, in February this is what was in my closet –

3 scarves

2 fringe jackets (when was the last time I even wanted to wear these?)

17 skirts

28 button down shirts

1 long sleeve shirt

2 turtlenecks

2 cat suits

19 sleeveless shirts on hangers

2 winter coats

2 fall/spring coats

4 costume dresses

4 dressy dresses – mid-length

5 dressy jackets

13 casual dresses (7 long, 6 short)

2 robes

36 pairs of pants – hanging

9 pairs of pants – folded

11 bath sized towels

39 tank tops – folded

7 sleeping shorts

13 sleeping shirts

14 leggings

12 tights

32 pairs of socks

42 pair of underwear

17 bras

2 lounge pants

3 swimsuits

11 tee shirts – historical personal value – not for wearing

That’s still an awful lot of clothes. Perhaps you can see how easy it was for me to go something like 10 weeks without doing laundry. Aren’t I lucky to be American? I do not say this facetiously. How many women in this world get by on 2 ratty bras and 10 old pair of underwear? Or less? How many women in the world own 2 or 3 dresses only?

I’ve heard of women who have in their closets something like – 3 skirts, 2 dresses, 4 or 5 pair of pants, 8 shirts and 3 jackets. And they live fine with this! They don’t feel a lack of clothes. They mix and match and appear well dressed! I’m not there yet. I still have too many clothes – many more clothes than I ought to need.

Every week I try to whittle it down somewhat, somehow. The process is not glamorous.

When I take off my underwear at the end of the day – if it’s a pair that was loose, or tight, or uncomfortable in any way – I throw them in the trash – not the laundry basket. Same with bras. I’m trying now with the theory – Do Not Keep Anything That Isn’t Top Quality.

I am certain I have not gotten rid of nearly enough clothing yet, still, but when it’s so hard to find what I like it is truly hard to let it go.

I’m gonna do a quick experiment – I’m gonna copy off that list above (from 8 months ago) and compare it to what’s in my closets and drawers right now… (Wish me luck.)

Same – 3 scarves

Gone – 2 fringe jackets

13 skirts – 17 skirts

25 now – 28 button down shirts

Same – 1 long sleeve shirt

Gone – 2 turtlenecks

Gone – 2 cat suits

Same (I wear them all – I made sure of it!) – 19 sleeveless shirts on hangers

Same – 2 winter coats

Same – 2 fall/spring coats

Same – 4 costume dresses

Same – 4 dressy dresses – mid-length

2 now – 5 dressy jackets

16 now (crap! I went shopping!) – 13 casual dresses (7 long, 6 short)

Same – 2 robes

29 now (this includes some inadvertent shopping.) – 36 pairs of pants – hanging

7 now – 9 pairs of pants – folded

Same – 11 bath sized towels

Same (there was some shopping and change-out. I love tank tops.) – 39 tank tops – folded

Same – 7 sleeping shorts

8 now – 13 sleeping shirts

Same – 14 leggings

9 now – 12 tights

34 now??? – 32 pairs of socks

35 now  – 42 pair of underwear

Same (there has been some change-out, call it upgrading.) – 17 bras

Same – 2 lounge pants

2 now – 3 swimsuits

Same – 11 tee shirts – historical personal value – not for wearing

Tally = Minus 40 things, plus 5.

I suppose that’s better than plus 10 or 20 over 8 months time – right?

Obviously I could do more here, though I have made a good system for rotation and making sure I wear everything I own – for if I won’t/don’t wear it, what’s the point of keeping it? The list would have more impressive cutbacks if I’d counted before the great no-laundry experiment but I didn’t and so it goes.

Now – I ask again – do you really know what’s in your closet?

I dare you to make a list…

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Why I do what I do now; a start to my story

I have been trying to get rid of stuff for years.

Or at least saying I was trying to get rid of stuff.

What this actually meant, was that I had a box in the corner and every time I came across a thing I didn’t need or want anymore, I would throw it in the box. Maybe I would fill a box in a month and I’d then give it away.

That’s not really getting rid of things.

Really getting rid of things is a process that is much more complicated than a box in the corner.

I know I was saying it, because as I sorted through stuff I found cards from my best friend saying “I’m giving you a gift certificate this year for your birthday because I know you’re trying to get rid of stuff.” These are dated as early as 2004.

Also there’s my book journal on my computer. I looked through it recently (in search of what I thought of a book I know I’ve read but couldn’t remember) and found that I’d read things like Don Aslett’s “Not For Packrats Only” as far back as 2002.

So for nearly a decade I have felt like I had too much stuff.