Spring Cleaning
Part of this has to do with controlling what we can control, since it seems like there’s so much in the larger world that we feel we can’t. … People feel out of control. If I can get my eight foot cubicle under control, well, at least I’ve won that battle and I have that place set.
Jane Von Bergen on Open Source
To Listen: Get Adobe Flash Player, or download an mp3 at the bottom of the post.
Inconspicuous Consumption [Michael Basial/Flickr]
In the pursuit of getting organized people are trading in their “more is more??? mantra for the simplicity and ease of “less.??? Mies van der Rohe would be proud.
A cottage industry of personal organizers has been perpetuated by McMansions that are overflowing with stuff, thanks to superstores such as Wal-Mart and the infinite shopping possibilities offered online. Martha Stewart is another unwitting culprit: women are inspired to have a-home-for-all-seasons and if that means having a personal warehouse chocked full of patio umbrellas, scarecrows, and velvet window treatments, so be it.
The problem with clutter starts at the store but the real issue is the hardship of parting with what we have. For many, each object signifies an opportunity, a possibility. That rowing machine you never use carries the potential for fantastic abs, that video camera and tripod: your screening at Sundance. Sentimental value is another heartstring that ties us to such things as boxes upon boxes of photographs and childhood toys.
Getting organized is no easy feat. In many ways it’s akin to therapy. We have to change our habits, organize our brain and hardest of all, distinguish what we want from what we need.
In this hour we’ll talk about our culture of consumption. We’ll also talk clutter: clutter in the home, clutter in the office, clutter in the brain. By the show’s end we’ll also learn how to get out of this mess.
Is your living room more like a landfill? Do you walk into the store to buy batteries but leave with a carload of goods? Is spending thousands on a personal organizer, to sort through our thousands of dollars worth of “junk,??? symptomatic of a societal ill, or is this the only way–in a land of abundance–that we can short-circuit what we’re hard-wired to do: hunt and gather?
Aricia LaFrance
- Psychotherapist, life coach and personal organizer On her site you’ll notice that she has a new CD, “Getting it Together,” which covers the basics of organizing as well as information on customizing a plan based on your personality type
Grant Mccracken
- Research affiliate in the Comparative Media Studies at MIT, blogger This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics, and author Culture and Consumption II: Markets, Meaning and Brand Management
Jane Von Bergen
- Journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and blogging about mess and the workplace at Digging Out
- Recommended Reading
-
David Allen, Getting Things Done
Barbara Hemphill, Taming the Paper Tiger
Gary Thorp, Sweeping Changes:Discovering the Joy of Zen in Everyday Tasks
Special thanks to personal organzier Margaret Crawford for suggesting these books
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March 14th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Me, I’m not a pack-rat. My better-half, a pack-rat. Thus, a harmonious mushy middle is acheived!
If I have an item that is not used for more than 6 – 12 months, it goes. No memoriablia. No sentimentality. No compromise. It goes. Any item that sits in the fridge and turns into a science project, it goes and is never bought again unless there actionable intelligence it will be consumed.
Before I start any project requiring serious mental, spiritual, physical energy, I do a physical and mental housecleaning. I do this before every project. It is part of the ritual. I keep all notes, samples, supplies, books, etc. around for an indeterminate future, but they are unfiled, but boxed up in the proper place out-of-sight in a storage facility or secondary memory storage (e.g. CD or DVD).
With advent of convenient digital secondary storage, I can maintain a large repository of visual and audio material without the feeling of clutter. Also, I have software tools I’ve developed to retrieve this material in a convienent way. Convergence of tool user and tool developer. This is primal for me… and all this archival activity tends to drive others around me slightly crazy. Cluttered mind, uncluttered work space seems to work for me.
My guiding principle for spring cleaning: Daisy Moses (aka Granny) on the Beverly Hillbillies.
March 14th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
I jumped ahead to see if I could get a word in before Winston Dodson cluttered up this site with his usual non-stop comments. I wonder about that guy. Could he be one of those special ops agents they use to infiltrate certain open forums and disrupt them by creating chaos.
March 14th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
If left to my own devices, I’d be living in a near-empty house. All I need are a bank account, a PC, a camera, and a saxophone. And one fork and one plate.
But.. when you add in a wife and kids, especially the kids, all mess breaks loose. If you look away for a second, someone is giving the kids a battery-powered toy with dozens of plastic pieces. Or a kid brings home a backpack full of art projects. Or the school is encouraging us to buy books as part of a fund-raiser. Or gymnastics class is giving out trophies.
And of course it’s harder to throw things out than it used to be. What do you do with a broken TV and some half-empty paint cans? The charities I call to pick up my old couch, toys, and lamps only want new stuff they can resell.
And those damn attractive spokesmodels on TV keep promising me that if I buy one more thing I’ll be happy. And the Department of Homeland Security wants us to stock up on water, food, diapers, duct tape, medicine, firewood, batteries, plastic sheeting, face masks, crank radios, sleeping bags, and what all.
The country has gotten rich over the past few decades, but our understanding of what to do with our resources hasn’t grown with our wealth. If we lived in smaller houses with less stuff, and used the excess wealth to invest in energy independence, we’d be a lot better off. So what’s stopping us?
March 14th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
h wally, I don’t know that we’re yet so threatening that J Edgar is wasting man-hours disrupting this community. In any case, your concern would be a little more compelling if Dodson actually HAD weighed in on this thread, and if he ACTUALLY HAD been unproductive in doing so. So far all I see is constructive and entertaining comments from two regulars. Don’t spoil it.
March 15th, 2006 at 1:10 am
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David Thoreau
“Our life is fritted away be detail…Simplify, simplify.�
Henry David Thoreau
“Let your capital be simplicity and contentment.�
Henry David Thoreau
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.�
Henry David Thoreau
March 15th, 2006 at 6:37 am
nother comes through with the essential quotes. I had heard that when Thoreau appealed for “Simplify, simplify, simplify” that Emerson responded that one ’simplify’ would have been sufficient. I’ve always wondered: is this apocryphal? Either way, it hits my chuckle button.
March 15th, 2006 at 9:03 am
This is not meant to be productive, constructive, or reductive, but my non-electronic source spells the “less is more” name “Mies van der Rohe”…and what do you know, now there is an online version! (But my 1972 edition has two pictures in the margin.)
March 15th, 2006 at 9:42 am
One can be cluttered with the Once dear but long forgotten, the I might need this some time, the Where the hell did this come from?, the I thought I threw this away already, the this was so cute I couldn’t help myself, the Hey! Give me a break it was on sale, the It’s a part of me, the It was a present, after all, and the Look what the cat dragged in.
There are just too many things and too many excuses not to clean house like that neat freak cheesechowmain, though I wish I could. But here’s my answer–live in a Japanese rabbit hutch apartment. With such a limited space, it is essential to limit clutter and avoid over-consumption. This may be one of the reasons Wal-mart is not succeeding here and why saving rates are generally higher.
Of course people shop like crazy here too and fill the garbage dumps, but everything is of smaller size and the clutter is more suffocating so it is easier to think twice before buying the I just have to have it.
March 15th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Cheesechow: Could you elaborate on the wisdom gained from granny on BH? Just curious.
A few years ago I cleaned out my storage unit (an entire industry built on over consumption) and one day when I was at the unit, all these people started showing up at another unit. Apparently the owner of the stuff in that unit had died and his friends had come to sort through his stuff. I remember thinking that I was glad I was going through my own stuff and vowed I would never leave such a task to my own friends.
Going through the stuff was in some ways a process of redefining myself. Like, even though those 5-gallon jugs belonged to my dear departed Dad I am not really ever going to be a winemaker – they go. But I’ll keep the frames because I am going to keep painting. The hardest things for me to get rid of were the sentimental things. After confirming with my sisters and making sure nobody in our family was ever really going to practice/play the bagpipes I donated them to a bagpipe school (thus giving up the fantasy that I will ever practice enough to play well). It’s a relief to get rid of those objects that carry an implied obligations, like all those unfinished sewing projects. Keep it moving. Keep it flowing. Storage units are the big black holes of bad feng shei.
hmmmm, my current abode could sure use a good thinning out. timely topic.
March 15th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Its true about the living in a small space. I marvel at the fact that my favorite and least cluttered home was a studio apartment with a loft bed. It was a 20×20 square with 15ft ceilings and an extra el that looked like a mini-hallway with the bathroom at the end and closet along the width. I had more storage in that apartment than in my 1200 sq ft house with a full basement. But more than that, you had to live with everything in your face. Cleaning was easy because there wasn’t much to clean and I didn’t accumulate things (not even a TV) because there simply wasn’t space.
I’m still not much of an accumulator. But I do live in a house with others and it is always cluttered. Its an old house with less than minimal closet space. And I, too, find that even strangers give my daughter ‘things’ which end up all over the house. I can’t stand it. She becomes so attached to them, but it is so much stuff.
So, I ask, “In a culture such as ours, how do you train your child to live simply and let go of things?”
March 15th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
I like how peggysue puts it, that there are “objects that carry implied obligations.” Seems like such objects can be of two types: the sentimental object that you are obligated to keep because you would feel guilty throwing it out, and the object that is part of an intended project. And like peggysue’s bagpipes, sometimes an object can fall into both categories!
I am a big-time nostalgic and sentimental gal. I love old movie stills and little toys from when I was a kid. I have a few bells that were my grandma’s (she always collected them) and the hopechest a family friend built in shop class back in maybe 1920. I live in the house where my grandparents lived from the 1950s until they passed away. Nostalgic objects will always be the hardest for me to part with. Mostly I don’t keep them out of obligation but out of tenderness. I think it would be helpful for me to reasses what I’ve got in the house (and the shed in the backyard) and figure out if I really do love everything I’ve got or if some of it is here for other reasons (like obligation).
One area where I am making progress is in parting with objects related to intended projects. As a writer, I have long had a hard time getting rid of any books or papers that I somehow, someday MIGHT possibly use for a writing project. But I’m now able to be more discriminating and realize that, really, I’m probably not going to write a poem about inertia that will require my college physics notes, and if I do need to know about physics for a poem or series of poems, I can go to the library or Wikipedia or…
I also like cheesechowmain’s use of digital storage, and I could definitely make more use of that in lessening paperwork.
OK, now as soon as I finish grading papers and have a little time to rest before the next quarter, I really will do spring cleaning. No, really, this time…
March 15th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
peggysue: “Cheesechow: Could you elaborate on the wisdom gained from granny on BH?”
This is interesting. I am usually excessively analytical about things, and usually appallingly way off course in that thinking. But in regards to this matter, I’ve been doing it so long, it’s approaching traditional, non-thinking, non-understanding. I’ve been doing this for at 15 – 20 years. So peggysue, thank you for your question, this is very therapeutic writing, and very boring reading!
First, my mother sort of trained her children to do this. She would go room-by-room during spring and almost repeat the granny approach. So in this regard, it’s mom wisdom. I quit questioning mom wisdom in most matters years ago. Things have been working out better for me.
Second, I move frequently. I can usually combine the moving step with the inventory assessment step. I have a friend who gave me sage advise: You should never accumulate more than can be packed into fourteen orange crates and a two of suitcases. I don’t know how he arrived at this number; I think it something to do with the van he owned. Anyway, I’ve learned the hard way that to manage moving at a DIY scale, I need to assess my inventory on a regular basis. The practical value of this step has led me to easier moving. So, I’m flexible and have had the enjoyment of living all over the place (most regions across the country). It has also stopped me from most impulse buying. This is very practical for my wallet. I’d like to think it has broken me somewhat from the irrational buying behavior. I hardly ever experience buyer’s remorse anymore. I’m actually not a neat person at all. I dont’ like cleaning up on a daily-grind basis, so with less stuff comes less cleaning. Finally, I try to recycle as much as possible back into the economy by either reselling or giving stuff away. I find myself doing this frequently with books and clothing. Thanks to ROS, I’m going to be investigating Craig’s list in about two months.
I don’t know if any of this qualifies for wisdom, but I can honestly say I feel contentment, piece-of-mind, and something in the neighborhood of happiness. By owning less, less owns me, sort of thing. The granny approach forces the confrontation and begs for resolution I suppose. The one drag on all this are paintings that are difficult to part with. This is being worked on, but it’s slow going. I’ve not yet reached the (en)lightened level of fourteen orange crates and two suitcases. And after starting this process, my fungible goods mass has dropped down to a level that has reached equilibrium. My inflow is roughly in harmony with my outflow. Weird. I’m still aiming for fourteen orange crates. At fourteen orange crates comes a glimpse into near empty reality. Maybe I’ll achieve total bliss: zero orange crates!
March 15th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
7 good reasons to clean in spring:
Most house dust is dead human skin
Or dog fur
Or cat fur, replete with allergenic dander
Or rodent fur (in cat-less houses)
Itsy bitsy critters live in all this bio-waste
Vile critters
like diseases
Hence house spiders, who prey on the vermin
(Vacuuming house spiders is like anti-bacterially nuking your house-body’s immune-system! Leave ‘em be!)
Me?
I can’t be bothered with spring-cleaning.
My idea of spring-cleaning is to open the windows on the first warm and breezy day, and watch the fur-thatched dust bunnies swirl into mini tornadoes – and then, hopefully, out the windows.
If this fails (as usual) then I vacuum all the low-traffic nooks and crannies – but guiltily, since it terrifies the poor little cat!
Eventually, even slovenly writers like me get around to spring-cleaning.
Often by July.
As for clutter:
I hate clutter.
But I love each and every item comprising the clutter!
(This is one of the many fatal flaws of being a sentimentalist.)
The stuff I don’t love doesn’t last long enough to find its honored place in the clutter.
Pen-ultimately: I too love digital storage.
And lastly, moving across country on a shoestring budget is a great method for busting one’s sentimental hoarding instincts.
March 15th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
So far, several of the contributors have mentioned the art of staying uncluttered and of the need for a good spring cleaning. While this is a practical step once over-accumulation has set in, don’t we really need to step back and reframe the discussion? The really question is how to embrace that usually unmentioned 4th R of the environmental code REFRAIN. allison points us in the direction with her question, but is it about “letting go” of things or not purchasing them in the first place? (Allison, is this what you meant by letting go?).
The Buy Nothing Day idea is on the right track. So are media literacy studies of advertising techniques in K-12. But mostly it starts in the home as Cheesechowmein has pointed out and parents need to show by example.
In the end, despite all the economic talk of “production”, modern humans’ great endeavour is to find ever faster and grander ways to turn nature into junk, garbage and waste and our ecological footprint from a slight imprint to a canyon carving stomp. CLUTTER is actually just another and more endearing term for what in its next form will be trash. Shouldn’t we be calling it by its real name?
Sorry for referring to you a “neat-freak” Cheesechowmein. I stand corrected
.
March 15th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
but sidewailker — most of my clutter is books and CD’s!
(Can you feel the protectiveness I have for my clutter?
March 15th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
Nikos, if they don’t get in your way and they are not collecting dust, then you might want to think of them as an intrinsic part of your living space or as furniture rather than clutter, otherwise you could donate the books to an accessible library–one of the greatest commons we have. Though I have to say I am inclined to be the same as you, especially with books and computer gear. But I am forced to contain it all in two 9′ X 12′ rooms (two walk-in closets in some houses), which forces limitations on the possessive urge and also why I love digital living.
March 15th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
In the runup to Hurricane Rita, when all of Houston tried (unsuccessfully) to flee the city, my wife and I tried to assemble the stuff to put in the car. It was hopeless. Favorite pictures, family albums, electronics gear, hard drives…. it was an encounter with the basement of our minds. We really DID love a lot of our stuff — but it was scattered everywhere throughout our home! After Rita missed, and we returned from a high-rise refuge (we never did leave town), we had to bite the bullet. Twice a week for months, stuff we didn’t even realize was still here went to the curb…. And then, little by little, the fever wore off. Now, I look at my books (3,000 and still growing) with a feeling of helplessness. It’s like looking in the mirror and seeing a 60 year old guy staring back: you know he’s toast (sooner or later) and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. So now, as hurricane season draws ever closer, I simply live in the present — amid the clutter — with the conviction that all the stuff matters. It doesn’t matter to anyone else. But, in a hopelessly meaningless way, it is me. And I, equally meaningless, am the owner of all this meaningless junk. Sort of reasures me…
March 15th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
My house is always a horrible mess. I have 17 cats and they’re not always careful about where they potty. A couple months ago I was almost evicted because of a flea problem. The health department came in and gave me lots of wonderful tips on housekeeping. I was really shocked at how disgusting my floor looked when they ripped up my shag carpeting. I have to say that things smell a lot better now.
March 16th, 2006 at 11:11 am
This might be a stretch but it’s just a thought.
So much about our life is the struggle with letting go. Letting go of certain friends as we move on in life, letting go of our parents as life moves on, letting go of the bliss of ignorance, letting go of the grudges we hold so dearly, letting go on the dance floor, letting go of judgment, letting go of youth.
Sometimes I think that holding on to some of these trinkets is a metaphor for our struggle to let go of the bigger things in our life.
March 16th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
There is a cohort (8% and growing) of people for whom ‘get help getting organized’ represents serious medical advice. For adults with Attention Deficit Disorder the executive function of the frontal lobes is perpetually chemically depressed and decision-making shunts to the pleasure center where the new, the novel and immediate is preferred neurologically over anything that takes discrimination, evaluation, etc. Organization is impossible, and the emblem of an un-diagnosed ADD adult is a lifetime of procrastination, unfinished projects, risky behavior etc. See the website of Dr Daniel Amen for a start.
Since it has been proven that certain new activities like video games and web-surfing can produce brain states which mimic the most crippling symptpms of ADD like disorganized thinking and actions, impulse buying, attraction to danger, what does this say about the culture which deifies coolhunting and branding?
I say it’s headed ecstatically for the nearest cliff it can find.
March 16th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Nother you are so right about this:
“So much about our life is the struggle with letting go. Letting go of certain friends as we move on in life, letting go of our parents as life moves on, letting go of the bliss of ignorance, letting go of the grudges we hold so dearly, letting go on the dance floor, letting go of judgment, letting go of youth.”
And I work on this every day. So please let me keep my stuff as compensation for my success, not as a metaphor reminder of my failure.
I will need 300 years to read the books I have- but I want them nevertheless. I threw out Alan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind” and then I was sorry.
Pots I give away or smash. I can do that. But old clothes are hard to part with. If I could just get rid of the piles of articles I’ve saved to read. Recent articles “of note” are filed in my computer now, desktop cluttered, folders within folders.
Whenever I try to lower the pile, I find something wonderful that I was glad I kept. It helps to be in a bad or sad mood or sick or disgusted and not wear your glasses to be serious about getting rid of stuff.
(Did you every hear George Carlin on our attachment to “Stuff” ?)
March 16th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
Thanks Potter for joggin’ my noggin’
George Carlin on ‘Stuff’
http://www.writers-free-reference.com/funny/story085.htm
I saw Mr. Carlin years ago perform this routine live. Excellent.
I don’t know if this would help you or anyone, but I bought a scanner a few years ago. They at fairly reasonable price points. I now can manage my physical pile by creating digital piles. I cannot really articulate why, but it’s much less stressful to reduce the physical into digital bits.
March 16th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
How about the most important “spring cleaning”? The examination, and divesting of one’s tightly held but no longer useful BELIEFS.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
CCM- It’s takes time to decide and to scan though. I stopped saving any current articles but how can I get rid of all those excellent pieces about how we should or should not invade Iraq? How can I get rid of all those photos and pages from 9/11 or “Shock and Awe” or those excellent NYTimes photos ( color) of Afghani women in their burkas?
Oh and I have video of the above. AND I have video of Tienamen Square with that guy standing in front of the tank ( and so on……..).
Serious Lee 17 cats!!!!! amazing.
Obviously you can’t keep collecting without letting go but ….why can’t we have stuff if we have room for it???????????
March 16th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
From personal experience, I can recommend a unique method of spring cleaning; move to a small island in the tropics.
In 1995, I moved to a tiny island in Micronesia, approximately half-way between Hawaii and Guam. Instead of loading up a container, the cost of which would have been covered by my employer, I decided to get rid of almost everything. I moved most of the rest in cardboard U.S. Priority Mail boxes.
The experience was truly liberating. I’m back in the United States now and continue to live my life with fewer possessions and better experiences.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
I’m the type that can’t pass a dumpster without looking in. I always come back from the dump with more than I went with. I love peoples throw away treasures. It is unbelieveable what people throw away. My biggest problem is I hate throwing things away. It seems like as soon as I do I need it the next day.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
re: jazzman. I don’t know if this qualifies, but the idea of shedding material clutter and confronting them became a ’spiritual’ practice. It has lead me to examine things at a level beyond the surface. I find that I use some of these rituals to create a space to visit belief. This pulls it down out of the metaphysical clouds and puts it right down here on earth. This also comes into play when I begin to actualize what materiality I need. Anyway, I think you’ve brought up a really important point.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:11 pm
I thought I could keep the clutter out of this move for two years across the Atlantic… but seven months into my stay in Boston, our place is pretty darn full of stuff. And I’m *not* a materialist.
Thank god for Craigslist… because lots of it sure ain’t comin’ back across the ocean with me next July. And back in France or Germany, I’ll have a lot less room… and no built-in closets.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
I’m with serious Lee. That’s the way my mother was too. Maybe it’s a genetic thing. My mother went through the depression and her parents were immigrants who saved everything for some potenetial reuse.
There is so much waste in the way we live now.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
I have a friend that was having marital problems. She started shopping and couldn’t quit. It got so bad she didn’t even bother to open the bags when she got it home. She just started filling rooms until her place looked worse than mine. The bad part is when she finally got some help she started giving stuff away and I ended up with a lot of it.
I think a lot of people now are collectors. I have another friend who colllects Jim Beam bottles, franklin mint, beany babies, tv guides, you name it. The shopping channel is a big contributor to her clutter.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
Cheesechowmain – I love the Emerson response, “one simplify would have been enough.” thanks for that! Your eye for levity and your quick wit are so welcome in the face of us (all too often) taking ourselves too serious.
Thanks Potter for the Carlin stuff. As far as your 300 books, I have another Thoreau quote for ya.
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
Henry David Thoreau
March 16th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
“The lost simplicity of being alone” Nice question Brendan.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Is EBAY a metaphor for our need and love of “stuff”
March 16th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
It’s a loss I’m familiar with. I miss the time when I could pack everything into one black suitcase and a computer bag, though to be honest at the time I wasn’t very happy. I think there’s something unhealthy about the simplicity of always being packed to leave.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
I have another thought. Maybe we’re raising our kids to think living in clutter is normal. I have lots of friends with kids or grandkids and their room are absolutely full. I had a neice who liked cabbage patch dolls. Everyone in the family bought her cabbage patch dolls, her dad took her to thrift stores on saturdays looking for used cabbage patch dolls. At last count she had almost 500. I think kids sort of like clutter. It always seems like kids want to dump out the toy box and surround themselves with their toys. There seems to be some comfort in it for them.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Our houses are designed as a throwback to the era of the front Parlour Room. Many of have living rooms that are picture perfect and go unused. For great ideas about changing this, I recommend the popular book: The Not So Big House, by Sarah Susanka..
March 16th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
Thanks nother Thoreau is wonderful. I said I need 300 years to read my books. I have more than 300 and they are all ( I think) the best. I had a large collection of books years ago and lost practically the whole lot of them….. but then I gradually assembled another collection.
I think Chris is connecting having stuff with disorder and chaos and this is not necessarily so. You can have a lot of stuff and it can be organized.
Also- if you have a lot of stuff you may reach a point, like I have, where you have enough for the most part. But if you get rid of your stuff, you start collecting again.
Chris—- hey you threw out my email!!!!
March 16th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Sweet Jehosephat, Chris is a kindred soul! I have bored my wife to a state of eye-rolling boredom on how my dream is to miniaturize our belongs into a 2″ x 2″ x 2″ square. I’m sure she is probably ignoring me at this point. That’s as close to zero orange crates as I can imagine and still not slipping off into transcendental bliss! We need Buckminster Fuller to get us out of this jam.
Advice Paul Hawken was given by a Buddhist teacher: “Read the books that save you from reading others.”
March 16th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
One of the easiest way to simplify for me and my family was my home burned down….it was amazing how much “stuff” we did not need. We lived in a mobile home for six months and built a new house. I’m still keeping things simple, and it is truly a breath of fresh air.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
While I’m wrestling with cleaning out the home of my recently passed parents, I’m struck with how individual objects unlock [or cue] great memories. I’m paring down only gradually, having difficulty saying goodbye, and being secretly grateful that they didn’t keep “too clean” a lifestyle. Great books, wonderful old photographs – on and on…
March 16th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Maybe Thoreau is the answer. If you don’t need it Thoreau it away.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Interesting Brendan, the idea of one suitcase seems so romantic, yet as I get older, I feel that yearning for more.
Ut oh! I guess this means that we have wives and baby carriages around the corner Brendan.
Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
I have struggled with the love/hate relationship with my “stuff” my entire life. I assuage myself by saying it is my environmental concern – I can’t stand to fill up the landfill with the effluvia of our consumption – so I save jars and bags and string etc etc. Deep down I recognize the inability to part with things as an insecurity. Not just the insecurity I inherited from parents who lived through the Great Depression, but my personal insecurity that I cannot discard things that I have touched as though they have become extensions of me. Would that much of it would be abhorrent to me like hairclippings, fingernail clippings etc. – all manner of bodily effuvia, that are abhorrent to most human beings. But the “stuff” is much more intimately connected to me.
It is also connected to my pride in creative use of found objects. I get particular joy from recycling an object for a use other than that for which it was intended. So finding such a jewel in my basement at just the right moment is worth all the clutter, worth keeping all the hundreds of items that will never be used.
I’m trying to internalize the notion that rather than feeling “in control” by not discarding the unnecessary, I am controlled by the stuff. And try to get my thrills elsewhere !
March 16th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Just listened to that comment by the organizational pop psychologist that is on the show. She said, “kids (don’t want things) they just want to spend time with their parents”. I know when I was 12,13,14,15,16,17,18. I wanted nothing better than to get away from my parental units, and spend time with freinds. And today kids want games, ipodz, computers, clothes, cars. This is what is driving the economy. Kids needing more stuff. She is clueless. Geesh.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
I should add, that the few items that were salvagable from the fire became symbols of all that was lost. And it was indeed “enough” to hold memories…and we do have a tiny piece of a family handmade quilt…it’s in a little box, but after listening, perhaps it’s time to frame it….. : )….would that clutter up one of the walls too much, do you think?
March 16th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Just a quick comment, for now: If you hate to discard things someone could use, by all means, look into freecycle.org! Hope to follow up later with a proper profile and more comments; my apt. looks like a badly-organized storeroom; just turned 70, so Depression origins are a factor.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Love you Buddahpest. Nice to see a kindred spirit out there. I too had parents who went through the depression. Back then there wasn’t any extra you had to fix things or make do. Now everything is throw away. When was the last time you saw a small appliance repairman. I used to restring old lounge chairs. Now you can buy new chairs cheaper than you can buy the strings to re string them. I think we can blame cheap goods from China for part of it.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
I’ve learned that nothing you buy from an infomercial at 2:00 am is good stuff.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Potter, I was raised in part by a grandmother who’d grown up on an impoverished Greek island. Her experiences as a shopper in the USA to which she migrated was imparted to her grandson:
Buy nothing that isn’t on sale.
Buy everything on sale. (okay, that’s an exaggeration.)
And, most importantly (remember that she grew up with nothing save a single set of clothes) never ever throw anything out.
It’s all riches!
Exotic, princely riches!
And you might someday need it!
So, if you throw it out, you’d have to buy it again!
And you might not have the money!
Well, all of this is slightly exaggerated, but it does lead me to wonder if pack-rat-ism might not be ebbing over generations as the Old World ancestors’ influences fade out from our population’s consumerist sensibilities.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Well, shows over I think I’ll go dumpster diving ought to be a lot of good stuff.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
Two weekends ago I went into my mother’s attic (she’s put herself on waiting list for a nice assisted living place). There were bundles of stuff of mine. A couple of hundrends of pounds worth (and I mean weight, not british money). Life drawings and picture journals. A little montage made for me by a beloved/forbidden boyfriend.
After a brief hesitiation, I started humming You got to know when to fold em, know when to hold em, know when to walk away, know when to run.
It ALL went into the trash. Whew. I carry my history within me, don’t need these dusty choking artifacts.
Now if I can apply this in my own home.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
A time to save. A time to throw out. Having to move quickly in one case I got rid of a whole lot of stuff. It can be liberating to do that. I moved to Idaho with 9 boxes. 6 years later I moved back to the Islands with a full Uhaul truck. A lot of the stuff I brought back was in the form of books and art tools. My feeling at the time was that I’d already experienced giving up all my stuff and this time I wanted to keep it. Of course the process of moving does force the issue and there was plenty of stuff I didn’t keep but I felt no need to be ruthless about it.
I was thinking about jazzman’s post on divesting outmoded beliefs. Maybe it came to me as a metaphor but I was reminded of when I was retrieving old stuff from a garage, stuff that had been there for years. I found a basket of wool wound into balls. It looked OK. It smelled OK. But when I reached in to it I felt something crunchy. EEK! a mummified mouse! Maybe I have some outmoded beliefs that at one time burrowed into my consciousness just looking for a warm place to pass a winter’s night but have since then died and turned into mummies.
thank you jazzman
March 16th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
nother: “I’ve learned that nothing you buy from an infomercial at 2:00 am is good stuff.”
Indeed. My Flowbee Precision Haircutting System purchase was an unmitigated disaster!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00020F9TK/103-6492913-0023857?v=glance&n=284507
March 17th, 2006 at 12:25 am
I really think that we have an addiction to stuff as a way of self-medicating to ease the pain of having so little community in our modern lives. This is especially true in the U.S. We are isolated in our cars, our starter mansions, our professional corporate jobs. Marketers have convinced us that if we can just get the lastest most cool items we will feel better. Of course tis never owrks so we want more, more, more… This over-consumption has HUGE consequences for the ability of this planet to sustain us. If you think global warming is bad now just wait until 1 billion chinese citizens are living the American dream!
March 17th, 2006 at 1:03 am
I’m surrounded by clutter. It’s not just the books that I read by the ton. It’s all the unfinished projects.
This thought occured to me the other day as I was brooding on my cluttered life.
These days the poor and the middle class are fat and the rich are thin.
In the future you’ll be able to tell the rich by their austere uncluttered lives, while the rest of us sit in middens surrounded by the stuff that we were brainwashed into buiying.
March 17th, 2006 at 7:20 am
serious Lee- I grew up in an apartment house in New York City. We had to take the garbage down when the “dumbwaiter” stopped working for good. When my mother went down with our garbage she would check out what other people were throwing away and come up with various things she found. They were smelly and I used to say “Ma!!!!”
When I moved to the South End and then Roxbury, in the late 1960’s, I lived communally with very few possessions and little money. We used to go through the alleys on the trash day in Boston reserved for furniture, rugs, matresses etc. We found some beautiful antiques- stuff you would pay a lot for even then. It’s amazing what good stuff people throw out and probably replace with crap/ poorly made stuff. We also foraged araound Haymarket for the fresh produce that was on the verge of going bad that we got wither for free or very little.
Nikos– that was the ethic that I was brought up with. Save it…. you might need it for something. And it has to be on sale. So you wind up buying your winter clothes in the spring. Yesterday I bought jeans for $7.50 at Filene’s (now Macy’s). Unbelievable. When the lady rang them up I thought I was going to pay $40- but she said that “will be $7.50″. My eyes bugged out. I said “wait a minute , I take another pair”.
(Out here in the “burbs” a lot of folks keep their cars in the driveway and load up there garages. My neighbor just built an additional garage ostensibly to put his stuff in so he could put his cars under cover but I notice the cars are still sitting in the driveway.)
As I get older, I notice I acquire less and throw out more though. What motivates me is not wanting to leave a mess behind for others when I go.
I’m working on it. I’m working on it.
March 17th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
[...] andet størrelsesforhold er vi derfor allesammen samlere. I radioprogrammet Open Source om Spring Cleaning handler det om, når alle disse indkøb resulterer i “clutter†[...]
March 17th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
As a Navy wife I moved a 3-child 4 bedroom house from Virginia to a West Wales council house. A complete bedroom would not fit in the house and spent several rain soaked days on the lawn until I could get the council out to haul it to the tip. I kept a full size dryer in a tiny dining room along with the table. It had one bathroom upstairs where the tub and sink took up one room and the toilet occupied a tiny closet-sized room. My household started out in Hawaii in 1979 with one kid and by the time I permanently arrived in Williamsburg Virginia in 1994, I had whittled it down to essesial furniture and 10 or 12 boxes for the attic. My advice to those who struggle with clutter-keep moving!
March 18th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Chris,
In referring to my comment on the show (thanks), you mentioned that people in Japan are anti-wal-mart. That is not exactly what I said. While it is probably true of smaller supermarket and department store operators, who fear Wal-mart’s corporate power, for the most part Japanese people are not even familiar with the name “Wal-mart”. This in itself reflects that company’s inability to make waves in this “small-cart and shopping basket” market.
Really enjoyed this show.
March 20th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Thanks for this one. Brought many issues with parental deaths and cross country moves and a current redistribution of family ’stuff’ into focus. I now have one box that is my father and one that is my mother. Both are easy to get at and have just enough stuff to help tell their stories to my kids.
I listened via ipod while painting a new baby room and I think in part thanks to the show, the new configuration will have less furniture in it.
I also had an odd sense of pleasure in that this was the last of the unlistened to Open Source shows on my ipod. I had finally caught up.
Regarding Cheese and the flowbee, I would argue that Safety Can and Safety Jar have come in handy from time to time.