At least once each decade some version of “let’s all ditch the clutter” surfaces and, ever the optimist, I raise my hand and shout, “Me! Me! I’ll do it.” Truly believing that this time I will. Really.
I do appreciate the good intentions of the dedicated people who try so hard, and so persistently, to break me of my bad habits. But, so far, no good.
One woman’s clutter …
Still, I wouldn’t consider myself a clutterer, I’m more of a collector. For years I have “collected” items that might someday prove useful or that stir a memory. I ferociously hang on to Tupperware lids, inkless pens, old toothbrushes, orphaned appliance cords, Springsteen concert stubs, soy sauce packets, cruddy green pennies and that tiny onesie with blue giraffes because even though its owner is long grown, if I press it to my face and inhale deeply, I can still smell baby.
The list goes on and on. I can’t find it but I know because it’s in a junk drawer somewhere, or the silverware drawer. Same difference.
Once you become a “collector,” every drawer is a junk drawer.
But does it make your heart sing?
One time I joined the “if it doesn’t make your heart sing, toss it” movement. My cracked bowling ball made my heart sing, my two teenage boys, not so much. In the end I kept all three, because surely there’s a use for cracked bowling balls.
I almost managed to clear out some of my husband’s clutter, though, before he realized what I was doing.
“Why?” He asked when he caught me tossing a frayed denim shirt with grease stains on the front and a collar held together with duct tape.
“It doesn’t make my heart sing,” I told him.
“But it makes my heart sing,” he said.
“Honey,” I explained as gently as possible, “this isn’t about your heart.”
And what’s that in the garage?
Sometimes my husband will comment on the number of “collectibles” I hang on to. This from a man who keeps a biplane, in three pieces, in our garage. Seriously, all he has to do is pull it out, stick on the wings and he could fly it down our driveway.
That’s great, but in the meantime it takes up all the space for the car plus three bicycles I don’t ride anymore and the cast iron, claw-foot bathtub I might someday, maybe, turn into a planter. Or a horse trough, if we ever get horses.
Giving thanks
Each new generation believes it has discovered the secret to keeping our personal spaces tidier and more organized. And sometimes I do want to be one of those people with a bare-naked refrigerator door and the ability to find the emergency radio before/during the emergency and not three days after the “all clear.”
Last spring I attended a lecture about how to begin the process of decluttering, which, in this iteration, involved talking to an item and expressing gratitude for its service, then ditching it. I scribbled five pages of detailed notes during the workshop and once home, followed the script exactly.
“Thank you cast-iron skillet, but you’ve got to go. I know you belonged to my mom before I stole you. You’re heavy and kind of icky and I have Emeril’s cookware, the complete set, nonstick. But I do love you, so you can stay.
Thank you size-eight dress for making me feel like a million bucks two sizes ago. You’re out. But wait! There’s that Keto diet and seven months until the next family wedding so you can stay.
And that tiny onesie? We talked. It’s staying, too.
And so it goes
And so it goes.
Well, actually, it doesn’t, because nothing went.
Now I see that there was another “how to declutter” lecture at the library at the end of last month that I missed. That’s too bad because I realize that maybe by attacking my house I was starting too big and that a declutter system might work if I tackled a smaller space, like right here in the RV, which after having been lived in for four months, contains multiple layers of clutter.
Or rather, “collectibles”. But first I need to find those five pages of notes. I know they’re here somewhere — probably with the emergency radio.
