May 6, 2015

Stuff is trending again. Rather, the accumulation of stuff has gained momentum. Books about downsizing, shedding and tidying up are topping the best-seller’s list. Professional organizers are back in business, helping overstuffed individuals learn to purge. Internet services share tips to clear the clutter.
It’s as if the Great Recession is a figment of our American imagination. Or maybe it’s hidden behind a pile of boxes in a crowded garage.
The heart of the issue is really about spending. In good times and bad, we make decisions on what we can live with or without. Items that are considered discretionary have become, on average, more affordable.
So, bring on the fancy coffee makers, laptops, smartphones and sports equipment. Clothes can be shipped overnight! Of course, you’ll need totes to store these purchases once they are outdated, waiting to be sold in a garage sale, hence the success of places such as The Container Store that sells, yes, containers to store more stuff.
The spending habit’s first cousin is its hoarding relative.
I’m not a hoarder, but I am a “keeper.” I keep things I do not need, though I have my reasons. I have made many moves throughout my life and swore with each move, I’d accumulate less. And, in some ways, I have.
Moving five times in seven years has an implicit way of self-reduction. Through the years, I’ve eliminated enough furniture, clothes and accessories to fill a full-size home.
At one point, my family of four lived in a tiny apartment. Our lives were downsized professionally and personally. Yet, in some ways, our apartment life was very Dickensian, revealing some of our family’s best of times and worst of times. We lived a leased life of uncertainty, but we also found ourselves liberated by the lack of physical and emotional clutter.
We simplified.
We took long walks around the apartment complex’s pond. We played board games at night since the video games were hot commodities at our previous home’s moving sale. We talked more because our gathering place was a kitchen/dining/family room combined.
Yes, I missed parts of my previous life, but some of the pieces were just that, pieces. Of the one and only custom-designed couch I ever bought. Of the porch table with the wrought iron chairs. Of the crystal chandelier in my daughter’s bedroom.
I didn’t miss them as much as I thought I would. What I did miss, or maybe, what I loved and still love about those things are the memories attached to them.
Of holding my newborn babies on the couch.
Of Saturday night dinners al fresco with family and friends, lounging for hours around the porch table.
Of reading Shel Silverstein for the umpteenth time to my daughter tucked in her bed beneath her crystal chandelier.
The objects I have come to realize I cannot live without are few in number but rich in sentiment.
Lately, I’ve been going through family photos. I see a picture of my husband and me as a newly married couple holding hands. There’s a photo of my dad, alive and happy, laughing while hugging my children dressed as Dalmatian puppies for Halloween. I find a snapshot of my friends celebrating someone’s birthday, tipping wine glasses to the camera.
There are rarely things in those pictures besides people.
That’s the stuff that life is made of.