Hoarders Anon?

 RHYS BOWEN: Following yesterdays post on clothing colors and what they mean I’m taking on storage. I feel as if I’m moving into spring cleaning mode, out with the old and in with the new. Throwing out what I no longer use. Trying to find a place for everything. We have a six bedroom house for two people and every room—almost every room—has too many things in it. (wait till you see tomorrow's post and you'll know who is responsible) The only exception is one of the guest rooms which Clare and Tim tackled last year with a dumpster and threw out the entire contents of the closet. Fabric and stuffed toys and long abandoned clothing and do you know what? I haven’t missed a single thing.

My daughter Jane made me abide by a rule which I’ve kept to. For every one new item of clothing that comes into the closet, two must go out.  It works well. It’s amazing how many things we keep “because they’re still good and I might wear them some day.” I should point out that the photo is only one segment of a very full closet!

 Our big problem is that we have too much, don’t we? When I was growing up each bedroom had a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. Those had to hold all the clothing of a couple, and they probably did. We did not have many clothes. My father had one good suit for funerals and board meetings. I wore school uniform all week and then had a winter dress, a good pair of winter slacks and a few hand knitted sweaters. In summer I had a couple of summer dresses and shorts and blouse. That was it.  For my toys I had one shelf. I don’t want to sound as if I’m whining. I truly never felt deprived and most of my friends had about the same. It was the wars after WWII and things were still scarce. So we didn’t need much storage.

 Go back two more generations to my grandmother and great aunt who lived with us: my great aunt Min (really Sarah Ann) had what she called her Tut bag. I think it must have come from the French tout, meaning everything because that was how she pronounced it. In it she kept all her treasures: a silk scarf, a couple of broaches, a few photographs. Every item that meant something to her was in that little bag. When I was small I used to ask to look at it and she’d lovingly share each item, explaining its meaning to me. She had so much less than we did and yet she also never felt deprived. She grew up sharing a room with two sisters. They had a school dress, over which they wore a white pinafore and a good dress for Sundays. That was it.

 

At the moment the beds in one of the spare rooms are covered in photo albums while John does some sort of project. I have two big boxes of purses that I rarely use. I know I should buy one purse for winter and one for summer and throw out the rest but I can’t seem to do so. I have given away a lot of good jewelry to the next generation and all the shoes that are not good for my ankles. I suppose that’s a start.

But we won't even mention the garage, which, I have to confess, has never housed a car. Instead it is full of garden furniture, John's various beers, racks of wine, and my excess books that I have no idea what to do with... yes, clumsy sentence. So call the grammar police.

 So I’m very interested to know how you declutter. Hallie, I know you threw out a lot of stuff. Was it hard? The children say “don’t you dare die and leave us with all this.” Good suggestions appreciated!

The Heartbreak of TMS - Too Much Stuff

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Happily neither of these pictures depicts my home - but...like a lot of people I occasionally wonder, why the heck do I have all this STUFF?

I know I have a lot less than my my friend's wife (the hoarder.)

Or my other friend's wife (the shopaholic.) 

But every closet, chest and trunk is filled to the max.

My house has no attic, no basement and very few closets (lots of glass...great for plants, not so great for stuff.)

So I'm requiresd to make periodic purges.





Right now I have a Bagster in my driveway. Have you seen them? They're very large, tarp-like bags which can hold a couple of tons of debris. 

They cost about 30 bucks and when they're filled you just call Waste Management and someone brings a truck and hauls it away. It's one of new favorite things. And for the past few weeks I've derived an enormous amount of pleasure filling it. Broken chairs that I've never gotten around to fixing. Falling apart willow fencing. The tag sale shutters I never used in the whimsical garden I never made. The broken window pane that I never got crafty with.


So explain to me how, with a clear conscience, I went to not one, but two estate sales yesterday. What if I really liked something? Where would it go??

The scary thing is that I own a bunch of stuff that looks very much like the items in the generic tag sale pic below. (I used to collect vintage radios.)

Mercifully I resisted the charms of the outdoor furniture sets, the stone planters, the vintage rattan sunroom furniture, and the ubiquitous floral prints which seem to be at every estate sale I've ever gone to.

That said, I came home with three very large resin planters, a black wrought iron coffee table, wicker footstool/table, two small ceramic planters and about 20 books - history, vintage Peter Rabbit and a copy of Anne of Green Gables, which I've never read and someone on JR rhapsodized about.

And a Stangl vase ($8) that gets my vote for deal of the day.

 Is this schizo behavior? Like ordering diet soda with an order of french fries?

(I'm counting on the JRs to say "no Ro! This is perfectly normal....")
 

Stuff

..."that's the whole meaning of life isn't it, trying to find a place for your stuff..' George Carlin



RO: All right, maybe not the whole meaning of life, but there are times when the dear departed GC seems to be right on the money.
I suffer from it in silence all year long, but once or twice a year I have a full-blown outbreak of TMS - too much stuff. Which, as Carlin pointed out, you have to store, move, clean, worry about, etc.
My solution to this affliction hit me a few years back when I had some work done on my house. There was a giant dumpster parked in my driveway for months. One day I tossed in a small item, ...who remembers, a broken flower pot or garden tool. A light bulb went off. I started combing the closets looking for small things to throw away that wouldn't get in the way of the sheet rock. Then I asked the contractor if it would be alright for me to throw in a wicker lounge chair that was threatening to fall apart. He looked at me like I was crazy - "It's your dumpster."
I flung the rickety chair into the dumpster. I was briefly overjoyed. Then I climbed in and took it out. Had I made a mistake? I'd made a similar one when a friend told me he knew how to use a chainsaw and the sight of him shirtless caused me to say "sure, take down that one, too." (I've spent five years trying to fill in that spot in my garden.) Two days later the lounge chair made it back into the dumpster.



Now every 2-3 years I rent a 6ft dumpster. But I'm smart enough to have a staging area. If an item sits in the driveway for 2 days, it goes in the dumpster. I've had neighbors come by and ask if they can go dumpster diving.
The dumpster is in the driveway....



JAN: I have often thought that the real appeal of vacation homes isn't the fabulous beach or ski mountain. It's the fact that there isn't that much of your stuff there. So you feel so much freer.
At any rate, I once subscribed to Flylady, which is sort of a manic housewife gone wild. She sends you daily emails, which can be irritating. But the one of most value was the one that made you go throw out something like 33 things in your house each week. It's so much easier than you think and it feels really good. Unfortunately, Flylady also wanted me to keep my kitchen sink clean and POLISHED. And when I tried that, I started to develop hostility toward anyone else who used the kitchen sink. Husband, kids, strangers who wanted to wash their hands.... Anyway, Flylady had to go. But now that you mention it....maybe I'll go throw out 33 things in her honor.



RO: Any significance to the number 33? Was she drinking Rolling Rock at the time? I think that's the number on the back of the bottle. BTW..I threw out 6 pairs of shoes and 4 handbags today. I feel as if I lost weight. That means I have 23 items to go.



JAN: I'm guessing Flylady for a daiquiri girl or maybe a whisky sour or mint julep. Definitely not beer. And I'm not exactly sure it was 33. It could have been 27. It was definitely a two digit, odd number, though. Memory is good for that much.



HALLIE: When Jan started saying "the real appeal of vacation homes isn't the fabulous beach or ski mountain..." I was sure she was going to say that the appeal is that they provide space for all the overflow junk that has no place in your home.
My husband has a terrible time throwing things away, and I try to ignore it--seems trivial relative to the pleasure he brings me on most other fronts. But we did have a small breakthrough when he threw away a teeny weeny red polo shirt that his mother had sewn a nametag into the collar. We're talking junior high. I told my daughter Molly about it and she immediately asked if it had already been picked up because she wanted it.
Definitely genetic.



RO: Oooh, I can't believe he threw that away. That was a keeper.



ROBERTA: OOh Ro, we have a dumpster in our driveway too. But I would never order one on purpose! This is related to construction to repair some chronic leaks. I'm going down to the basement now and start to work on my 33/27. Question: if you throw away a pair of shoes, that counts as two items, right? And do they count double if they belong to my husband? (Ro: Absolutely!)
And this brings up a separate but related question. When is it ok to clear stuff out of your grown kid's room and make it into a decent guest room? I was astonished to learn that one of my friends completely renovated her daughter's room last summer as she was getting married. (She was 22.) I'm not suggesting tossing those grade school soccer trophies into the dumpster, just maybe move them to a box in the attic???



And hey, we can make this topic into a pact: In order to post on JRW, you have to report what you threw out:)

HANK: Whoa. Am I the wrong one to talk to. I have: playbills from all the plays we've seen. That's LOTS of plays. Tee-shirts emblazoned wtih every event I've gone to. I mean: BOXES of tshirts. (Bruce Springsteen at Fenway. The Police at Foxboro. The original HELP T-shirt with the Beatles from 1967 or whenever. The 1980 Olympics/CBS News (I worked for a CBS station then) when it turned out the US didn't go.)

It's Mom's fault. She threw away all my Beatle magazines and DC comics and MAD MAgazines from the 60's, and wouldn't they be worth a lot now? So you never know what's going to be valuable. I always say.

Our problem, if it's a problem, we have a third floor. It used to be an apartment, but after the lovely teacher who lived there moved, I decided we needed the room. Rooms. So: the living room is now a guestroom. One bedroom is storage. We won't go into that. (Wrapping paper. Gifts for all occasions. Stacks of books written by pals that I give as presents. Toys for all ages, jsut in case somene comes over who needs a toy.The out-of-season slipcovers.) One room is a cedar closet. One room is: oh, I can't even reveal this. Shoes and purses.

Last week I gave ten mammothly huge bags of clothing to a church charity. I mean--lots of great stuff. And it was so exciting. I'm now craving to get rid of stuff. Can't wait to clear it out. Shoes count as ONE thing, you guys.

And let me tell you--it's fantastic karma to give things away. Do it.

So question for you. How many white tee shirts does one person need?

And I agree, Roberta. Tell.

RO: And what gave you the most pleasure to get rid of...This time it was a chaise cushion that had somehow turned into my husband's blankie. It was disgusting. And now it's gone :-)