Okay, I give in. I'm going to read it. I just put The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up on my hold list for the library and I am debating just flat out buying it so I can read it quicker.
As you know I've avoided it because I tend to have issues around this area. (Some of you are asking yourselves "What DOESN'T she have issues around?")
My family is borderline hoarder territory. And I go between getting stuff and throwing it all away depending on when I last visited home and a few other things. I've got a system in place now. When something triggers me to go on a clearing out spree I clear it out of the house into the garage where it sits for awhile before it goes to Goodwill. I do this because there have been too many times where I've cleared out a bunch of stuff and then realized I really did want that stuff. This is a good stop gap measure.
So I've avoided the book because I already have a system. Because I don't really have a ton of clutter. Because I don't want to trigger a massive clear out that will be a mistake. But I have questions...
I want to see if the book addresses my questions. I don't know if it will or if it won't but I want to see.
I also want to see why it's been such a big deal for people. Is it just that most people don't know you can actually get rid of things you don't need anymore? Or is it just that people like the way she does it? So just like reading Twilight and Fifty Shades this is a book I might not actually enjoy that much but it's such a cultural phenomenon that I feel compelled to read it.
But mostly it's the questions.
Because having things means different things to different people. Does she talk about that? That it might actually be more stressful for you to get rid of things than to keep them? I know the basic principle is "Does it spark joy?" So you pick something up and if it sparks joy you keep it, if it doesn't you don't. Okay...but...my colander isn't going to spark joy when I pick it up but I will regret getting rid of it the next time I make pasta.
And I have friends who are serious minimalists. Like each member of the family has a plate. A glass. A fork. And so on. But that means after each meal you have to wash dishes. Okay, I do dishes almost every day anyway because I have one blender and one set of smoothie travel mugs, but do I want to have to wash my breakfast dishes before I can have lunch and then wash my lunch dishes before I can have dinner? Not really. Having free time sparks more joy in me than constant dishwashing, so does the book talk about that?
And does it talk about why you might keep things other than the necessary, like a colander, or the time issues, like multiple dishes. Does it mention that if you grew up in plenty it might be easier to get rid of extras than if you grew up in want?
My dad kept everything that he thought might be useful later. Every spare bolt or nut. Every broken down appliance he could store. Every decent piece of wood that could be used again. And he did use a lot of those things. I've talked about it before, he was quite the inventor. He made things that made life easier and he made them all out of spare parts. A piece of wood and an old scrap of carpet became a boot remover. Old pallets became a luxury insulated dog house. Or a shed. Or a fence. He just built things.
My mother collects things that "are going to be worth something someday." So many collections of things. Figurines, jewelry sets, books. Anything that is sold with a number on it she's a sucker for. Even if you tell her, "Mom, this isn't ever going to be worth more than you paid" she will still keep them, and the box they came in, and the paperwork it came with. Because you never know there was that one woman in North Dakota who sold her Maximilian Von Shotzinger bug eyed doll for $1000 and she only spent $989 for it. So there you go...
But both of them were children of The Great Depression. My dad would have been 9 and my mother 7 when it ended. But we all know that when the economy starts to turn is not when farmers and other people who are hit the hardest by the downturn feel it. So they were born into it, they started their lives with it, and they lived with the ramifications of it forever. They kept things.
And so I grew up with them keeping things. And I also grew up poor. So there were things that we rarely bought. New clothes. Most of my stuff was from the DAV. Which is great when you are in high school and the cool "new" shirt that you repaired the small hole in and then covered it up with a kicky bandana is recognized by the person who gave it away in the first place. So you see, I have a thing about clothes. I don't buy a lot, but I keep them forever.
Books were from the library or Don's Paperback Book Exchange. Never a new book. And never a hardcover at all. Paperbacks and borrows. I use my library a lot...now. But it took me years, and honestly the digital options, to start again. Buying a book, a hardcover book, on the day it was released, meant something more to me than just buying a book would to many people. Having that book was a real solid thing. Even now that I read on my Kindle I have a few hardcover books that I probably will have forever. Even though I've already read them and if I were to read them again I would do it digitally. But having them means something to me.
There are other things that I have that I have never done anything with. I have a few DVDs that I've never watched. But being able to buy them because right then I wanted them meant something to me. It still means something to me. So even though my TV doesn't even play DVDs I still have some. Not many, and a lot of them have been transferred digitally but I still have them. Music CDs are the same. Albums I bought that weren't from Columbia Record Company buy 10 for a penny. It was a turning point for me that I could buy them if I wanted them.
So what sparks joy for you might be different for me. And not only might the thing have sparked joy when I bought it but now it sits on a shelf, or in a box and I never deal with it, getting rid of it might spark something else entirely. So I want to see if she talks about that at all. I have questions.
I have things because not having them was my only option growing up. My family has an abundance of things for the same reason. I get rid of things because too many things makes me think of the excess stuff and the dust it collects in their houses. So I go back and forth. And there is a part of me that worries that I am always just one step away from hoarding all of the things. Because I'm the only one who seems to not do it.
As many things as I have, as many issues as I have around getting rid of things, I keep a really tidy house, for the most part. I keep a real watch on what I do buy and why I buy it. Even if Brent might not always agree. (winky face emoji or eyebrow waggle GIF should be imagined here) None of my siblings do. They all tend toward the same as Mom and Dad and keep everything. Garages overflowing with stuff. Storage sheds rented out to keep more stuff. Piles of things to deal with or not. Just so much stuff.
It's why going back to Albuquerque almost always triggers a clean out for me. We are in my mother's house where she lives with one of my brothers and my sister and there is just so much stuff. Everywhere you look there is stuff. Paperwork and collectibles and magazines and books and just so much stuff. And then you add a dog or two and a cat or two and living in the desert and you get pet hair and dust with the stuff. And it's all too much for me. So I go home and get rid of my things.
And I've never really understood it. Why I don't keep as many things as they do. I thought it was probably because when Brent and I were first married I went from raised poor to working poor. We just didn't have the extra money to buy things. Everything we made was sustenance money. So what we had was whatever hand me downs from his folks fit in the little U-Haul that Ann and I drove from Albuquerque to Florida and that's that.
Brent grew up in a very tidy house. Probably excessively so on the other end of the scale. Dirty dishes had to be put in a certain place to wait to be washed sort of thing. They couldn't just go in the sink and wait, they had to be rinsed and stacked NEXT to the sink. It was different. But it was what he was used to and since we didn't really have a lot of things at the time it wasn't hard to just fall in to the tidy world of his. And you get used to it. Less to dust. Less to clean. It's not bad.
I did have my things that I wanted to keep and it did drive him crazy that I would have paperwork I was working on and the multiple books I was reading scattered around. He would put things away and I would get pissed because out of sight out of mind for me so I would forget to finish things. We compromised on tidy stacks and stashed junk areas. It worked.
But I still worried about a latent hoarding gene.
This past Sunday talking to C about it and he said that he thinks the reason I don't do that, the reason I won't ever even though my siblings all tend to it is because I broke from the family at a young age. I didn't just get married and move, I broke. I left the religion, I left the political party, I left town, I broke from the family in a lot of ways. And subconsciously part of that is tied to living a life that even looks different from how I was raised. Neat, tidy, less stuff. To the point where I get stressed if there is too much stuff and too much untidiness. Isn't that interesting? I see it.
So anyway...long blog to say I'm going to read a popular book and see what the fuss it all about.
I'll let you know when I start it so you can have first crack at all of my things.
Kidding...I'm kidding...
I've already gotten rid of them...
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