Clutter Clutter Everywhere, and not a place to Think!
What’s a girl from the ‘burbs supposed to do when she is uprooted from her spacious home and property (yes, a place where home and property mean 2 different things), and placed in an apartment that could fit into her former bedroom of said location?? It usually happens that living in a desirable city translates into sacrficing big time on space. When raised in these cities, families learn to accommodate since they dont know any better. The neighbors with a million children in 3 or 4 bedrooms, miraculously are always dressed in clean clothing, and the floor (from as far as I can see in the hallway) seems clean and clear. My smaller family, living in what is actually a larger apartment than these neighbors, has littered our hallway with school bags, food, and books, since the bedrooms are too full of computers, large toys, must have items, tons of blankets for every occassion, and on and on…
Whenever I quietly and demurly (I never scream) state that ‘I need space’, my husband always quips - ‘You want space. Move to Utah.’ (can anyone name the movie?) Now that I spend so much time working on the computer, I have actually called his bluff. Let’s just pack up and go to Utah and rent a big old mansion for $500 bucks a month, and have a room for each toy, one for blankets for all occassions, and a whole room just for single socks. Ah, space. I get warm fuzzies just thinking about it. Can you see me smiling through the computer?
They should have a training school for how to ‘unspoil’ or how to ‘citify’ someone. Teach them how to maximize space within small quarters, throw things away, and how much to purchase and how often. My neighbors dont actually keep every single picture or piece of artwork their kid has ever drawn, but how do your bring yourself to throw something away that is so precious??
Since clutter is an endless endless endless pit of a discussion, for now I will close with one of my favorites memories. I was 18 and visiting a friend in Manhattan. We were going to spend a weekend with her close family friends in the Upper West Side. Known to be a little outspoken, my friend found it best to warn me in advance that this family did not appreciate people ogling at their accommodations. I should keep any wows to myself. I shrugged her off and we went on our way. After walking through the apartment, I said to my friend - I dont get it. You have seen my house - why would I possibly be impressed with this apartment??
Ok, so naive right ?? - they have a whole floor in a Manhattan apartment building. Once I got to College in NYC, it didn’t take me long to realize just how naive I was, and how much more value their apartment has to my home + property. Harrison Ford lives in their building. Yes I saw him, and he waved to me. And I was 18 back in the days of Indiana Jones so this was way cool.
April 30th, 2006 at 1:38 am
My wife and I (mostly my wife) have slowly been dumping everthing that we don’t need in our lives over the past few years. She is taking an ongoing course on how and why to do this. I hear tidbits from the course and I see the results. It is addictive!
Recently I moved 3 boxes of old records out of my office to our storage area downstairs, which allowed me to free up a few surfaces that were being used for storage instead of writing, etc. At the same time I threw out a bunch of other things. My office is now much more professional looking.
More importantly, we gave away 3 1/2 boxes of books that have been taking up room in our storage area for years. Actually there were 5 boxes of books, mostly college textbooks. Ideally we would keep them for display, but most of the useful ones are already on our bookshelves where they belong. The rest — I found someone who was willing to take them to look through and try to give away what he can’t use. Now they are HIS problem. He also got a great suitcase that we were willing to part with.
We did go through the books and were pretty ruthless when deciding what should go. Of what is left we will give some more away and put the rest on our shelves.
The operative principle here is: if you have something and are not using it and probably never will you are being wasteful. Find someone that CAN use it and give it to them. Or sell it if you like and make some money. If you ever need the object again go buy one. In the meantime the space created (and money generated if you sold it) will probably be worth much more than what you were holding on to.