Unhoard Your Life

One of our most of basic instincts is to acquire things in life.

We get a job. 

We get clothes. 

We get money. 

We get material things. 

Then we get a place to put them into. 

We get more money.

Rinse and repeat.

We store the things we had already acquired.

We fill up our existence.

We run out of space.

Then what? 

We die.

Someone else has to deal with all of the things we acquired.

Some get tossed. 

Some get passed down.

Some get put into a box in some other space.

The cycle continues.

I am as guilty as anyone else in this life. 

I have an attic with stuff from years ago that I will never use again.  I have a foot locker containing things from my grade school years.   I have cases containing cassette tapes from my youth, and even from the days when I still had a car that could play a cassette tape.  I haven’t thrown them out.   I can’t play them on anything, but I can’t part with them.   I have stuff in my garage.  Broken bits and bobs that don’t belong to anything that works, but I haven’t thrown them away because, eventually I will fix them or find a use for them.   

No, I won’t.

I’m just as bad on a digital scale.   I have disks, drives, and files dating back to the Apple IIc era of technology.  I “try” to keep all the footage of gameplay I record for my YouTube channel as if I can reuse that footage for something else.  Multiple three or four terabyte drives sitting on a shelf.    I put quotes around the word try because, on occasion, the drives fail and I basically have a paperweight that lights up but does nothing else.

Look at video games, today.  You start out with nothing and then you have to acquire resources.   You get rewarded for getting things.  If you're like me, you hold onto things because even though you have no idea what they do, at some point, you may need them.  By the middle of the game, you are frantically looking to store things in your inventory or find uses for them because you have no more room.   Video games have mirrored my hoarding life or enhanced.  I'm not sure which.

Is it genetic?  Is it an illness?  Is it just laziness?

Well, the first thing you have to understand is that I am the child of a baby boomer, that ever aging generation that lived through the Great Depression and World War II.  They had to scrimp and save everything because there just wasn’t any money or materials during those times.  Everything was precious either from a KTLO (Keep The Lights On) perspective or because of the war effort.  My parents have a house full of things from the 60s through today and I do not relish the day I, along with my siblings, will have to go through it all.

The second thing you have to understand may also explain something about yourself if you find you have the same issue.   I tend to resonate from mnemonic devices.  I associate a time and place to listening to a song or a visual reference.  I can remember a memory from a smell or listening to a sound.  For me, the tactile response to seeing something from my past brings me back to that place better than just having to remember it.    Maybe it’s fear of aging.  Maybe it’s fear of mental deficiency in my later years. 

Maybe I am just lazy.

But I am getting better.  In fact, I have done a lot of junk dumping.   When I first moved into my house, I could actually park a car in the garage.  Then, slowly, over the next 12 years, things got shoved into every space in that garage until you could only walk a small path from the door to the back, after moving a garbage can or two.  Along one wall were cardboard boxes, just tossed on top of each other.  I planned to use those for building fires in my wood burner or fire pit outside.   Well, I quit using the basement because the cats basically took over the downstairs (i.e. destroyed) and the place needs redone, so no more fires and no renovating until they are gone.    The other side of the garage was basically things that just got shoved there.   After a horrible set of rainstorms this summer, the garage flooded and the place reeked of wetness and mildew.   So, shit got tossed.   All of the cardboard boxes were broken down and consolidated into one giant box.  Three weeks’ worth of garbage collection took care of all the bags that were filled.  Now, while I still can’t get a car in there, I can move freely about and it’s more organized and I should have no problems in the event of another flood as there is ample space for water to reach the drains if need be.  Not, that I want that to happen, but nature sometimes dictates these things, not you.

My daughter’s room was another sore point.   Now, I am totally ashamed in how this played out but it happened and I can’t change that. 

When she was born, we had her nursery all done up and just adorable.  As far as renovations go, I was quite pleased with myself for being able to do what I had done.  I hate painting and I suck at these kinds of room things, but it really worked out, well.  But, she didn’t stay a baby or toddler very long.  That tends to happen with humans, they grow up.   Yet, we still kept all the things; toys, clothes, furniture.  It all stayed in that room and soon, you couldn’t find anything.  You couldn’t walk.  You couldn’t sleep.  At the age of six and even seven, my daughter still slept on the mattress that came from her crib.   The crib itself became a day bed, but the mattress and frame remained in the same shape, basically, as the day she came home from the hospital, minus the front railing.  And you could not walk in her room without stepping on something.  You could not open the door all the way.   It was horrible and I didn’t have to sleep in there, so it didn’t get fixed for a long time. 

But, it got fixed. 

The crib was dismantled and stored in the attic.  A new bed was bought and all of her childhood things, like toys or clothes were thrown out, packed away, donated, or repurposed.  It was now the bedroom of a bright young girl who has room to move and grow and it’s not done, but it’s headed in the right direction.

The attic is another sore point but it’s on the list.  My room is just the same but it’s somewhat better than it was three years ago.   The rest of the house is slowly making a comeback and it’s hard and it takes time.   It also took something else.   It took someone else.

You see, my whole world crashed and burned in 2012.   I haven’t talked much about it or about anything else, really, because like this blog, my life became neglected.    

My marriage ended.

But that’s not what caused everything to go to hell in that house.   That’s what changed it all.  

Now, it’s not what happened during my divorce that’s important.  My ex-wife and I are still friends.  We live five minutes from each other.  We are still parents.  For the sake of our daughter, we swallowed any feelings of animosity or anything we had for each other and made it easier on her.   But, the things that didn’t get easy were undoing all the damage that had been done to our lives, by ourselves.  I still live in the house and it still has so many things from our life together in it.  So, it’s hard for us to un-hoard our lives because of all the moving parts.    Ashamedly, for a year, my daughter had to share a bed with me every weekend because her room was unlivable and maybe it was depression that was keeping me from getting my ass in gear to fix it, but it got fixed because someone, other than me, stepped in and helped.

That’s the key to un-hoarding.   You need someone who isn’t going to be a ‘yes’ man or woman.  You need someone to make you make a decision and then question that decision.  It also helps because you don’t get caught up in the trips down memory lane when half of the work is being done by someone who can keep things out of your hands.   There were times I stopped to reminisce over a onesie or a toy.   But, the fact that someone else is there helping you makes you feel more productive and… somewhat guilty that they have to help with all this work. 

You need a support system that isn’t going to say, “Aww, I know how you feel.  We’ll just keep a few things.”

No.  Kick it in the ass.  You’ll feel better.  

Remember, your kid isn’t going to be a baby again.  Someone else can use it or it can be discarded, properly.  Get rid of it.  

You’re never going to suddenly reconstruct that teapot that shattered into 15 pieces.  I don’t care how much Super Glue you use.   Get rid of it.

And then buy that person dinner or drinks or help them back.  It’s easier to throw something out when it’s not your stuff.  Just like it’s easier to move someone when it’s not your stuff.

Take back your life so someone else doesn’t have to when you’re gone.

If you live to be a grand old age, you should probably pare down to just the essentials.

Acquire memories.  Acquire friends.  Get rid of all those things you cannot use. 

Un-hoard your life.

The House of Stuff and Things

This has been made into a vlog entry on my YouTube channel

I have a lot of shit in my house.  Actually, it’s stuff.  Because according to the late George Carlin, my shit is stuff and everybody else’s stuff is shit.

It’s amazing how much stuff we can acquire over a lifetime.  It’s amazing how many things we gather in life and think, “This is important and therefore I must hold onto it, forever.  I must place it in a box.  I must place that box somewhere in my life where I can find it and look at somewhere down the road.  That box will be in a corner of a room in my house where I will probably not go into and it will stay there for years.”

Why do we do that?  Why do gather so much stuff?

I still have various bits of my life as a wee thing, stuffed in a foot locker in my garage.  They are things from my childhood, my time at college in Myrtle Beach and Pittsburgh, and my life as a 23 year old bachelor.    And they are pretty much useless things but, I keep them around either because I’m too lazy to toss them out or because if I do toss them out, somehow I will forget my life.  The things that make me who I am will slip away and I will have no memory of someday back in 1987 or 1993 that somehow particularly meant something to me at the time when I collected that thing.

These memories, locked away in that foot locker, sit in the back of a garage underneath a bunch of stuff I’ve collected over the years of being a homeowner.  Somehow, at some point, I convinced myself that I needed each and every one of these things in that garage.  A hose, a nut, a bolt, a tie, a length of rope.  It’s more of a list of potential murder weapons from Clue than it is of any real use, and yet they sit there, gathering cobwebs, insect carcasses, and dust.  Each one of these things was put there because they served a purpose they were probably not intended to serve.   My hope was that they would serve a purpose, again, quantifying their existence in a place so full of stuff, it cannot hold a vehicle anymore.

In fact, in every room of my house there is something that is of no use.  Usually, it’s me when I’m standing in the room because I should get rid of these things that serve no purpose.   But, I’m working on that.  Recent changes in my life have allowed me the ability to start weeding through the things I don’t need… or really want, but I have just let sit in a box, on a shelf, behind a bag, in a corner, of a room, I hardly go into.   

At what point do we get like this?  At what juncture do we come to in our lives that we find ourselves needing to gather material items in mass quantity?  We’ve all seen these Facebook and YouTube posts of people living in tiny spaces and a majority of us say we could do that, but could we, really?  Where would all of our stuff go?  Where would we put the appliances that serve one purpose and no other?   That’s what I want to get away from, really, things that serve no purpose.  Now, you could say those memories in my foot locker serve a purpose.  They are a reminder of who I was or still am, in a sense.    And those things will stay.  But everything else in this house of stuff and things is up for grabs.

But when did it start to get this bad?  I remember for the first 10 years of my life, I shared a bedroom with my brother.  My family consisted of my parents and three kids in a three bedroom house.  Now, there’s seven years difference between my brother and me, so for a 16 year old to have to share a bedroom with a nine year old, well that’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it.   In any case, all of my toys fit into a shelving area in the corner of the room, and for the most part of those 10 years, I barely spent any time in that room, except to sleep.  I mostly played outside or in the family room.  And I didn’t have much stuff those first ten years.   Most things were hand me downs from my siblings.  We didn’t have much stuff growing up, and maybe that was the best thing for us.

When my parents decided to upgrade the living quarters, and built a house nearby, I got my own room; and it terrified me.   I was so used to having someone with me at night that it was a scary thought to be in a room all by myself.  But, eventually, I got over it.   Actually, it was quite awesome.  I had my own stuff, now.  It was mine.  No worries about having to ask permission.  No fear that I may break something.   It was all mine.  My existence, my identity, summed up in a room of stuff and things.  So, my new room, that was all mine, accrued more stuff over the next eight years before I went off to college.

My parents’ biggest nightmare was not me going 600 miles away to college, but the idea that I’d have to have all my stuff with me when I went.  I needed all my things to make sure I remembered who I was, back home.   It was silly, I know, but it was me, my identity.    And, while I was at that school for four months, I accrued more stuff; mostly papers, and folders, and books, and a few clothes.  But then I came home and so did all my things.   At Pitt, I managed to keep only the essentials, because I was only an hour away.  All my stuff could stay in my room at home, because I was close enough to come home whenever I needed to.

It’s funny.  Most kids would never spend their entire college experience living in the dorms, but I liked it.   I lived in the same wedge shaped room for four and a half years.  I really only needed my room to sleep, study, entertain myself or another if I was so inclined.   I had a TV, a fridge, a computer, a microwave, and a phone.  I was set.  The rest of campus was my house.  I didn’t have to worry about roaches or overpriced rent or leaky plumbing or bad neighborhoods or utilities.   Why pay an exorbitant amount of money for sub-par housing in an apartment when I would only be in it a fraction of the time? 

Then I graduated, and my small collection of stuff and things, which had grown with more papers, clothes, mementos of college, and such, all came home and joined the rest of the things that made up me. 

Then, I moved out of my parents’ house and lived on my own.  With each residence; an apartment, a townhouse, back to my parents’ house; and then into a home, I managed to gather more things and stuff.  By the time I closed on a home, I had planned out all these new things I would need.   It was called a registry.   A wedding registry is like a license to check your brain and create a wish list of splurge.   Yep, when we get married, we ask other people to fill in the gaps of things and stuff that we want.  And that was probably the point, it got out of control.   A coffee bean grinder, a water filtration device, a set of knives, complete with a block and sharpener.   A lot of things that served one function and therefore, I had to double up on things to perform all the tasks I needed things to perform.  Then, as things got out more of control, I needed things to store my stuff, organized in a room I hardly ever go into.  Knickknacks, tchotchkes, baubles, all these things acquired over years of living on my own, just be displayed for 8 months out of the year, only to be replaced, for the remaining months by the same stuff, only holiday themed.   It’s madness.   Then, those things have to be stored as well.  Now, I have twice as much stuff stored in twice as many totes, in a room I hardly ever go into, and it’s only for display.   

When I got a full time job and ventured out on my own, I wanted a collection of movies I liked.   But that became a flawed concept because my VHS tapes suddenly became outdated, replaced by DVDs.   Then, after replacing most of my collection with DVDs, Blu-Ray came out.  Now, I’ve begun getting Blu-Rays and soon that format will be replaced by something else… probably digital.  Speaking of digital, I’ve amassed a few (like four) multiple terabyte drives for work stuff and things.  These take up less space, but they are vulnerable to being rendered useless if they tip over, apparently.   I’ve now become a digital hoarder, too.

It’s my fault, really.  I wanted these things.  I felt that having a house full of stuff was important.  While I sat in my apartment, which had five rooms, and a townhouse, that had seven rooms, I would daydream about when I would have a house big enough to prove some superficial point about myself making it to that level of materialism.   I would watch shows like Fantasy Open House, with host Claire Berger on HGTV.  (Not sure if it’s sad or hilarious that I remembered that show and host, by name, from over ten years ago.)  These huge homes in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Maui were listed for millions of dollars and I wanted to live there.  Hey, a bigger place for all my stuff.   Frankly, all my stuff would have probably fit in two rooms of these ridiculously sized homes, but I had plenty of room to get more stuff.  

But, now, I finally get it.   I recently had to tear down a pool that hardly worked or was ever used but I had to have it.  It’s a pain in the ass and I cringe at the thought that it will get stuffed into totes and stored somewhere for the next 10 to 15 years.   I have junk rooms that are filled with things I couldn’t care less about and it’s a panic attack of chest crushing magnitude to stand in the room and think, “Where do I even begin?” 

I know what I have to do and I know what I want.  I want to have only things that I either use on a regular basis or that can serve multiple functions.  No more quesadilla makers or coffee bean grinders.  I drink coffee regularly and yet it took me two years to see how pretentious and stupid I was for wanting such a thing.  Also, I have a Foreman grill which can make muffins or skillet items, as well as grills.  That serves three purposes and therefore is useful.   A six small wing capacity deep fryer that takes up counter space and is the size of an old CRT monitor for a computer is not.   I have other things that can accomplish that task.  

Now, I do want to get new things, or more accurately, things that are new to me that accomplish tasks.   I want things that I can enjoy and that serve a function.  I don’t need a lot of stuff.  A few tools that perform all the basics… not as seen on TV, enough dishes and silverware to handle my needs and maybe some folks who stop by, and just the bare essentials that qualify for performing all the tasks I need to do.  It would be nice to have a place to put all my shoes and shoes of guests when they come into my home.  It’d be nice to get those cubbies that you have in roller rinks or bowling alleys; something conversational, re-purposed, and cool.  I also need a place to hang coats, other than the backs of chairs, so why not take an old window, you know the kind with those cross bar things and turn it sideways, add some coat hooks, and then fashion the back to hold pictures. 

I recognize my house of stuff and things as a problem, now, ahead of my impending demise, hopefully many decades away, because I do not want to bequeath to my child the inevitable task of having to sort through my stuff.   My parents, now in their 70s, have a multitude of things in their house, things that are probably of good build and use, just packed in boxes, in the garage rafters.   I do not look forward to the day I will join my siblings in going through their stuff.   Not so much because of the task, but the reason.

Storage seems like such an insane concept.   If it’s not something you are going to use in the next year, why do you have it?  As you get older, that year metric should be reduced.  As you near the end of life, perhaps it’s a weekly thing.   By death, your house is no longer the house of stuff and things, but the house of you, the thing, which will one day be nothing.  And then, you, too, may be packed into something and stored somewhere, and hopefully people will go there to see you on a regular basis.