Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without

I am morbidly fascinated by the "Hoarder" shows on TV.  Don't most of us have a little bit of that deep inside of us, the inability or unwillingness to part with things? You hold up an old favorite shirt that's definitely seen its better day, and you hem and haw as to whether you want to let go of it.  Seriously, what's so hard about letting go?  And yet...because you love it so much, you put it on a hanger and hang it in the back of the closet. Ten years later you stumble across it.  Maybe it's made its way to the front.  And you "ooh" and "ahhh" over it.  And hang it way back in the closet again. Ten years later...same story.

I know.  I understand.  I was there once upon a time.

Let me tell you, though, when you make a monumental move, especially 2/3 of the way across America at the age of 57 after living in the same house for 28 years, what you've accumulated and what you've held on to, compounded by the stuff your husband has held on to,  and your daughter,  and the things your son has stored at your house, it kind of smacks you right upside the head.  It's there and it's in your face, taunting you, asking you, "So what are you going to do with me now?"

You begin sorting.  You purge.  You look at boxes in the nether corners of the basement that haven't been opened since you moved into the house almost three decades ago and figure, "Well, if I haven't needed what's in them" -- and you have no clue because they've been taped shut -- "I'd say odds are I don't need to know what's in 'em now."  And you haul them up out of the basement and toss them into the huge drop box, dust your hands on your pants, and head off for more.

Let me tell you about the drop box.

It was huge.  At least 4 1/2 feet high and 20 feet long?  I'm not good with measurements. But even so, trust me.  It held a lot.


Each day I'd have it full to the brim.  All the Tupperware and plastic margarine containers I'd been saving because "I might use these".  I could have stored enough food for an army if I'd ever filled them all up.  A broken coffee table we were going to "fix someday" but just followed us around from house to house since we'd been newlyweds...we'd been married 36 years at that time.  You get the idea.  There was even an old toilet in the cubbyhole underneath our back porch but I think that might've been left by somebody else.  At least, I like to think it was.  Why would we want to hold on to a broken toilet? 

You know...the flotsam and jetsam of everyone's every day life.

We lived in Portland, Oregon.  The mecca of homeless people and pickers.  We had that drop box for 4 days, filled to almost-overflowing each day, and when we'd get up in the morning it would be nearly empty.  Two pickers even came and knocked on the door and asked if they could have the old iron pole still standing by the street our son's basketball backboard had been attached to.  I told them sure, as long as they were the ones digging it up, not us.  It took them a while, but it was gone a few hours later.

Oh, the trips to the Goodwill! Value Village!  The things we gave to friends.  Stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff.

By the time we filled up the semi to ship everything to Michigan I was sick of stuff.

I was cured.  I never wanted stuff again.

So...6 1/2 years later I don't have any.  I have some items near and dear to my heart hanging on the walls.  In the china cabinet.  Decorating tables and shelves. In the curio cabinet.  But I now have a little chest I store items I no longer really want or have no use for in, and when it gets filled it gets donated.

Oh my, people.  Talk about liberation! 

I get my fix from "Hoarders" now.  Let them deal with their stuff.