Less

I paid two guys with a truck to remove heavy objects from my house. They hauled out the sleeper sofa I’ve had for, oof, 20 years? I had emptied out the pressed board cabinets in the basement; they took those away too. From the garage, they took a kitchen table with a broken leg that I’d used in my studio in the 90s, and another one, still, that I had tried to give away when I replaced it with a 1950s formica-topped cafe table I got for free off Buy Nothing. Yesterday I gave away a photography/laptop backpack and I returned a monopod that’s been standing in a corner of my office since I don’t know when exactly.

When I moved into my house, I had to take it as is. “As is” meant deep box valances blocking the top of windows with three to four layers of lace curtains dimming the remaining light. “As is” meant jars full of rust-speckled bolts and screws and nails and a workbench full of heavy metal power tools. I swear to god there were a dozen hammers, as though the previous owner bought a new hammer for every job he tackled. There were drawers full of picture wire and adhesive furniture feet, and behind a hinged panel in the basement, I found a fishing reel in a zippered canvas bag.

When my stepfather was diagnosed with terminal cancer, a fresh tide of objects appeared in my home. Taking them away felt like an act of assistance at the time but I have come to regret allowing that stuff to land in my garage rather than taking it directly to a second-hand store. Recently, while looking for the appropriate sized wrench for a plumbing project, I pulled open a drawer full of wood files and sharpening tools, part of my stepfather’s woodworking arsenal, tools for which I have no use.

I became acutely aware of all the stuff in my house while alone in the lockdown era of the pandemic. When I boxed the t-shirts my ex left behind I was shocked by how heavy they were. Other things were weighty too, they took up too much space. I could not easily release the remains of my mom’s art collection; I am so grateful to the friend who schlepped each piece between my car and a series of hotel rooms so I could deliver it to an Oregon consignment store. I could not bear to leave the framed prints in my car overnight. Who would steal art from a 2007 hatchback in the La Quinta Inn parking lot at the end of a rainy December? I feel foolish about this now, but the pieces held such emotional value at the time.

I own too many things simply because I enjoy looking at them. Those blue glass insulators. An Art Nouveau bone china sugar bowl. An oversized penguin-shaped cocktail shaker. For example. When I was into watercolor sketching, I would set these objects on my kitchen table and make still life paintings, the results of mixed quality for sure but the exercise satisfying to my noisy brain.

I still acquire new things. I bought a smallish television a few months back; I was tired of watching movies on my laptop but I had given away the big TV from my parents’ place. I replaced the old sleeper sofa with a trundle day bed. A friend gave it to me as part of his own divestment; we spent a Friday night reassembling it and then, drinking Manhattans at that kitchen table from Buy Nothing.

I sold the vintage cocktail dress, the velvet one with the beaded Cleopatra collar, and the radiant purple muumuu via an online consignment store. I sent a stack of CDs to a reseller, in return I got eight dollars and a little bit of space. I have given away countless oddities, my 15-year-old Kindle, an eight-foot post jack, a faux vintage side table lamp, the battery-powered weed wacker, a hard-sided dog crate, a duffle bag full of knitting gear, the well-used four-person tent, the list goes on and on. My best friend told me to hold on to the heavy pipe wrench, the bolt cutters, and the hatchet, “in case of the zombie apocalypse” but a lot of other things went to the local tool library.

There’s this philosophy, this way of thinking, this idea of abundance vs. scarcity. There are economic benefits, but Costco is about scarcity thinking to some degree. You buy the giant package of paper towels, you don’t worry you’re going to run out. I spent a lot of my pre- and mid-pandemic days in the land of scarcity thinking. There’s nothing like having to inventory all your assets in a divorce to make you want to hold tight to everything you’ve got. With all that behind me, though, I want less.

I will never be a minimalist, I like the complicated tableau of a duck decoy in a fabric hibiscus lei; she’s seated atop a 1940s Royal typewriter with the ledger carriage, two ancient baggage claim tags hanging from the wheel. It pleases me to look at the brass lamp I got at a garage sale, part of the base wrapped in a ti leaf lei I made myself on a trip to Hawaii. But the art exhibit catalogs? I like owning them, seeing the names on the spines, but I rarely crack them open. The rest of my CD collection sits unplayed in Ikea storage containers. My closets are full of things I don’t wear, haven’t worn for years, thank you working from home, no thank you middle-aged spread.

The triple whammy of divorce – family death – global fatal disease has me pondering my own mortality more than I would like, pondering where my things will go when I’m gone. There is this excavation process, the removal of the sedimentary layers left behind from lives not mine, and then, there’s looking at my own stuff. I’ve made good progress but there is still much to discard before I’m left with only the essentials, either because I use those objects all the time or because it makes me happy to have them.

I know all about Marie Kondo and Swedish Death Cleaning and that William Morris quote about having nothing in your home that you don’t find beautiful and useful. I understand how minimalism is often driven by wealth because you don’t worry you won’t be able to afford something when you need it. All this overthinking is grand, but there’s also just too much stuff in my house for a single childless woman who rarely wears outdoor pants. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of dying alone, but also, I have 27 coffee mugs. I do not need a philosophy to tell me that is too damn many and it is time for some of them, most of them, to go.