The Storage Space of Dorian Gray.
I've been cleaning and organizing my apartment and hauling stuff off to Goodwill and throwing things out.
Will I ever finish that paint-by-numbers zebra I meant to festoon with big red kissy lips? Probably not. Quilting? May get back to that- keep that fabric in holding pattern. Oodles of other craft projects? Nah. Let it go.
I have been sorting through and trying to pare down my sprawling collection of possessions, but owing to living in a relatively small space, keeping some things in storage seems unavoidable. I seem to remember George Carlin talking about stuff. "...if you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house" and "all a house is is a pile of stuff with a cover on it." Got that right.
I cleaned like a fiend on Friday and got the place more tidy than it's been in yonks. There's also much less stuff here, owing to the departure of unstuffed and peed-on furniture, as well as basketloads of clothing that went to Goodwill. Someone might look at my apartment and think I live in a relatively tidy way (I do, actually) and that it never gets nasty in here (clean clutter is the extent of it). But even if someone esle thinks I'm Donna Reed, I know what's in the storage and it weighs on me whether I see it or not. I'm always thinking I've got to do something about all that stuff. I'm ready to be more settled in a slightly larger space (with more studio room) and at that time I want to be done with paying for a storage unit forever. I may not make it, but I call that a worthy goal, anyway.
I've let go of so many objects in the last 6 months which I thought I'd never part with-- even so, why is it so hard to just let the impersonal objects go? I mean, you do have to have a certain amount of stuff to live, but more and more, the bits and bobs mean less and less to me.
They say if you love something, set it free and all that bullcorn.
Well, Friday I tossed away the boomerang sofa. Let's see if it comes back, but I'm not holding my breath-- I don't have room.
8 comments:
Honey, if that boomerang sofa comes back, you'd better have the fastest duck-for-cover in the Outback! That thing'll take your head off . . .
:-)
I swear I need to get rid of 3/4 of the crap in my house.
I would be so much happier.
Heh... try moving every two years. You'll be surprised what you get rid of!
Not the boomerang sofa!!! Hell, I've got memories from that thing...LOL
even so, why is it so hard to just let the impersonal objects go?
It's been more than ten years since I downsized from a 4BR house to a 3BR apartment to a Class C RV, done in the space of 8 or 9 months. I divested myself of over 90% of the "stuff" I owned in the process... NO exaggeration. The only things put in storage were my vinyl albums and photos, which remain in the custody of Son Number Two. Other than that? ALL gone.
It was one of the hardest things I ever did, bar none. But very liberating.
I know how satisfying it can be to rid oneself of all the detritus of the past. I had to look around and realize..."THIS doesn't really mean anything to me, nor this, nor that..."
Sometimes we wear blinders, and only hang on to things out of habit.
But you have to watch out for those boomerang couches...
Sometimes I feel like all the clutter in my life is like a gigantic invisible ball and chain around my ankle. Oh, wait. It's not invisible, it's all around me. Dang it. Well, I'm still working on it...
The problem with a storage-space is that it becomes a kind of magic vault and the things inside grow more valuable despite slowly losing their actual luster and worth.
My sister had a Magick-Storage in which a crumbly old kitchen table of undistinguished origins and a fairly ugly chandelier gradually became worth more and more and more - at least as far as she was paying to keep and not use 'em. After a couple years the $30 POS table and $50 crap-chandelier had been paid-for several times over that, and were harder to prise from her. Finally at garage-sale time she asked for each an amount much greater than their worth or value, because it was the cost she paid to keep them - and so keep them she did as they went unsold...
Unload the boat-anchors quick before they drag you down to Davey Jones' Investment Bankers!
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