First and foremost, I have to admit that this OP is drawn completely from my own current experience. Perhaps that’s something that should be obvious, but since this OP is less about what progress I’ve made, and more about the state of my life and how that is reflected in the state of my house, I wanted to make that clear.
My lease is up at the end of May, and I am moving. As I said in the previous thread, a move is a good time to get rid of stuff, but this move is particularly excruciating. I have moved 8-10 times in the past 8 years, and I still have far more stuff than would be expected for someone who’s moved so much. I don’t even want to think about how much stuff I’d have if I hadn’t moved so much.
This move is hard for me on a lot of levels. I am in the process of separating from my husband, and we are both moving to separate places. So there’s sorting to be done, and I have to think about my future housing, and future moves – alone. Furthermore, I am in the middle of finishing my MS, which means finishing a thesis (of DOOOOM!), and I will be gone for 10 days in early May. There are other stressors for this move, but those are the big ones that affect my cleaning and packing, I think. So I am trying to plan for my future, while sorting through the detritus of my past.
This has lead to me trying to figure out how to pare down the amount of stuff I own, without getting too bogged down in the emotions that are attached to the stuff, and the emotions that aren’t really attached to the stuff, but are easy to lead myself into thinking so. At the same time, I don’t think it’s healthy to wall all of those emotions off. I find it a fine balancing act, and one I’m not much good at.
When I originally started this post, about a week ago, I was trying to give myself permission to let go of a lot of things. Some things, specifically my “dust collectors”, I’ve been relatively successful at. Others, like my books, I’d only been moderately successful at. Others, like a couple of pieces of heavy furniture, I’d not been successful at at all. So I had a long post written about trying to make my way through all of this, and how hard it was, and what I thought the right answers were. At this point, I hadn’t yet found a new place to live.
Then I spent this weekend looking for a new place. And I found one, thankfully. As I searched, I spent a lot of time thinking, and a lot of time chatting with those I care about. I had been trying to convince myself to let go of my huge solid oak table (seats 6+) and matching buffet/sideboard, and I hadn’t been particularly successful. I kept telling myself things like, “Well, it’s not really more functional than something from IKEA. And it’s heavy, and you could probably sell it the same way you bought it.” I tried to avoid my feelings that this was my first set of “real” furniture, thinking about how unique the pieces are, and how much I love them. Needless to say, this wasn’t working.
A friend of mine helped ground me back out with it, and I think gave me the solution for a lot of my clutter. My friend pointed out that their table & chairs came from IKEA, and that the cost of the table & 4 chairs was 2/3 of what I’d spent on my table, six chairs & buffet. And those table & chairs are not at all something to be invested in. So why was I really worrying about getting rid of this set? If it was just that it’d be harder to move than the stuff from IKEA, well sure. But it’s also more functional than the stuff from IKEA, even if I hadn’t seen that originally, and it’s well loved. So if the problem is moving it, the solution may well be to hire movers.
On the whole, I had originally been thinking that the solution to the clutter problem was to “give ourselves permission to let go”. I still think that’s true to a degree, for all that it’s the kind of solution that’s on par with “find balance”, and just makes the audience want to stab the speaker. However, what we rarely hear, and what I discovered this weekend, is that there’s a flip side to that coin. We have to give ourselves permission to hold on, as well. Beating ourselves up over our investment in our things isn’t particularly conducive to actually getting rid of stuff!
So I’ll keep the table & buffet, especially since the buffet will effectively triple my counter and cabinet space in my new kitchen. I’ll still get rid of gobs of books, but maybe I’ll be a little less ruthless about it. I’ll more closely follow the idea I had in the first place. “How likely am I to be able to find this in a library, should I want to read it?” Anything that is absolutely going to be in a library is gone. Anything that’s likely to be in a library is gone. Anything that’s unlikely to be in a library, I can keep if I want it. And I plan to be just as ruthless with the dust collectors. Frankly, all they do is sit around and look pretty and collect dust. I hate dusting, so time to reduce the amount I have to do.
I feel better about all of this than I did, though I expect to have a few more meltdowns. I’m moving into a smaller space, which is often the death knell for me. When my husband and I were first married, we rented a two-story, three-bedroom house, and were able to keep that clean and uncluttered, except for one room. I was content with that solution, especially since that one room wasn’t our bedroom. Once we moved out here, where rent is so much more expensive, we’ve been condensed into smaller places, and haven’t been able to clean back up. I hope to spend the next year in my space doing a few things. Getting rid of stuff, clutter and keeping the place clean are high on the list. But I plan to do that by getting to know me, by myself, a bit better. Figure out just how clean and uncluttered I am, and either accept that level, or strive for better.
