What We Need Is Here

Life particles and computer files

I love order about exactly as much as I hate putting things in order. Or maybe I just dread facing the disorder; once I resign myself to it and get started, it's usually not nearly as nightmarish as I imagine. Still I put it off with a thousand excuses, and then face the chaos during summer when the excuses are running dry. The ordering has begun, preceded by the purge of things not used or needed during the past year.

This year, the old computer is on the list of horrors to face, and I've been going through its files - copying photos and music and purging the documents.  It's been the little kids' computer since I got a laptop four years ago, and it sits in all its over-sized glory on a desk in the hallway where we can keep an eye on its use (another monster lurking).  But, within its bowels remain quite a few of my files from the past. The happy music and photo files were a bit tedious to deal with, but I didn't let myself get too emotional about how much everyone had grown or things had changed  - just copied them quickly to cds (the computer is so old it won't recognize the flash drive). But the document file is a different story.  It's overflowing with souvenirs of the past: "to-do" lists, resolutions, schedules, drafts of letters, flotsam and jetsam from former jobs, articles I wanted to get back to, articles I wanted to write, garden records, home renovation plans, papers my children have written, poetry I didn't want to forget, notes on cancer treatment I would like to.  At its core it's like an external hard-drive for my mind – chockfull of its plans, thoughts, fears, anxieties, and hopes. It needs to be wiped clean of 2000-2007, so it can better function in 2011.

Opening these little folders is like opening boxes where I tried to contain the unruly particles of life. It's interesting how computers help us do that, or think we're doing it. It seems important so we name it and file it for future reference. But for the most part those particles already did their work on us stealthily, colliding with former versions of ourselves to produce who we are right now.  And now they're done.  The run-in with the dishonest air conditioner company, the controversy over Ben's chemotherapy side-effects, the spastic list of complaints and injustices I felt compelled to document during the spring of 2006, the volume of vegetables my old garden produced, the pros and cons lists for moving to the Catholic Worker House vs. going back to some more normal (paying) work, the lesson plans for the school gardens we grew in 2004. . . done, done, done, done, done, and done.

Like so much "stuff," trying to capture it –as a souvenir, or a record –often just gets in the way of living our lives now. While there's an appropriate use for the "archive" folder, like any folder, box, cabinet, or closet, it's going to need regular purging.  And probably the easiest way would be to warehouse so much in the first place. I am sending 99% of it to wherever it is deleted documents go, happy to have lived most of it, for having survived some of it. The folder of poems I am emailing to the 2011 version of me.

{photo: A tiny version of "The Thinker" on the "Gates of Hell" at the Orsay Museum, Paris - Rodin} 

De-cluttering update

This time last year I was about to sell my house and begin the process of downsizing - a physical chore with all kinds of psychological, emotional, and philosophical baggage attached to it. Sorting through the stuff in my brain took at least as much time as going through the accumulated stuff in the house. Now, almost nine months in, it's time to assess.

First, let me confess that I ended up cheating. I rented a storage unit in which to store a few things for a year - like the many boxes of books that belong to my son in grad school, the personal memorabilia of my other adult children (who are supposed to be going through it at some point...), and some furniture that I wasn't sure if we needed and hated to get rid of prematurely. Three more months.

That said, I don't really miss any of the things I gave away or sold, and I look around my living space here and think about how many other things I might give away. I like the spareness, and I like the fact that we use pretty much everything we have and that I know where it all is.

Still the "attachment issues" remain. Because we share our house with five other people regularly (and more on cold or rainy nights), I often find myself ridiculously bothered by people using my things, especially when they use them badly - scratching my dining table (not an heirloom, not expensive, and I only owned it a couple years before moving), using my grandmother's spring-form pan to hold leftovers, breaking the blender... These are all things I intentionally decided to share because I did not have any particular attachment to them. And now when I ponder my upset about them, I am flummoxed. Did I just transfer my old attachments to these things? Could it be that ownership is so ingrained in us that we're compelled to do it - a variety of animal territoriality?  Or is it that, regardless of how often we demanded it of our children, we really just don't like sharing very much? 

I have no idea. But I am learning. And what a good place to finally drive the lesson home.

Butt Kicked, Taking Break

Moving is kicking our butts!  Having survived the packing, hauling, cleaning, and grieving of moving from Home A, we are now hauling, unpacking, organizing, and further downsizing in Home B. I already love it.  But it is no place close to being really liveable (more like camp-able at this point).  Plus I am leaving in a few days to visit my parents for a week, then returning for a few days before heading to Guatemala to visit Joe... then to the Georgia moutains for a family reunion at the end of the month. So... I am going to face the fact that I am not going to be blogging here during July.

I hope you'll hang on and stop by again in August. I am so excited about living downtown, and we have lots of plans for the fall.  Hope July is good to you!

Fortune Cookie

Beware of large projects for which you have little time and few skills. 

Somehow we are going to be moved into our new home by Monday.  Or at least moved out of the old one; God only knows when we will actually be settled in the new one.  I have been painting for four days straight. I fall asleep thinking about pepto bismal pink (the color I accidentally painted the entry while I was trying for a nice, warm beige) and patching plaster.  My husband and I are alternately giddy at seeing things taking shape and threatening to leave each other.

We painted the largest room yesterday - 20x20 with 12 ft. ceilings, 2 doors, 3 windows and a fireplace to cut around - and lots of patching.  It took from 10am till 8pm.  While I was putting things away, I came upon the full cans of paint I had MEANT TO USE for the room - "Spice Delight."  Instead I had painted the room the color I had intended for the hallway - "Fortune Cookie."  Fortunately, it is just fine. In fact, I cannot imagine it any other color but freaking Fortune Cookie. We are so done painting that room. 

Two more days of painting to go. Then the relocation.  Like I said, the new owners take over on Monday, so we need to get moving! 

The Right Home

As I have mentioned before, our new home will have half the living space (for our family; we are sharing the house with others) and also has ZERO closets.  A lot of de-cluttering is going on here while we prepare for our move at the end of June.  I’ve got quite a bit of orphan stuff that needs a new home.

The easiest thing would be to bring it all to a thrift store and be done with it.  But I have recently become more savvy about what happens to most of the stuff we donate. I think we soothe our consumer-consciences when we drop things off at a thrift store, thinking our trash will become another’s treasure.  But unfortunately a lot of it just becomes their trash.  Take a look sometime at the huge dumpsters behind these places.  Clothing that is out of season, items of which there are duplicates already, and things with limited appeal and deemed not worth the floor space end up out back.  Cindy of Wastewear Daily is clothing herself (very nicely I have noticed) solely on perfectly good clothes tossed into the dumpster.  Even thrift stores have too much stuff.

The next option would be a garage sale, but I really don’t think I have the heart for it.  The whole process - from pricing to setting up to haggling to STILL having to cart off a bunch of stuff - seems overwhelming to me right now.

So far I have found a few great alternatives, one new to me that I am just LOVING: Craigslist.  I had heard of it but never used it before.  It’s quick, easy and free, and it connected me with some interesting people that wanted some of my more obscure items. A film student wanted my old 8mm movie projector and camera, an older fellow who collects cameras wanted my dad’s broken 1950s Argus camera, an elderly woman who is homebound wanted my scrap fabric to make quilts with, and a new grandma wanted my old patterns for little girl clothes.  Almost all of these items would have surely been dumpstered had I donated them.  I even made a few bucks.  In addition, the grief caused by my insane emotional attachment to this stuff is quelled a little by knowing I have found loving homes for them.

I am now going through books – another major attachment of mine – sorting through ones I haven’t read but want to, ones I'm finished with but might be nice to have at the CW House for guests, and ones that I'm prepared to part with. For the last, I’ll try our second-hand book stores first: Omni, Book Gallery, and Books, Inc.  The remainders will head off to the Friends of the Library for their annual book sale.  

Every time I begin to feel aggrieved again by all this hauling off, I have to stop and have a little talk with myself about how I am not being evicted, that I am choosing a new and simpler life and freeing myself of a lot of extra baggage by giving it to folks who will actually use it. Much better than my kids having to sort through all this stuff someday (and probably end up throwing it all in a dumpster). 

Clutter: The Local Connection

My house was built in 1964; it was a “Parade Home” back then (homes shown by the builder to entice new buyers), so had some extras. It has a two-car garage and seven closets (four bedrooms). The upstairs closets are roomy, one is a walk-in. Then there's a linen closet, a coat closet and an under-the-stairs closet (we use it for toys). 

Growing up, my grandmother’s house, which was built in the 30s and had two bedrooms, had two closets. Those closets were about 1/3 the size of our bedroom closets and would hold about 10 items of clothing each.

The Gainesville Catholic Worker House was built at the turn of the 20^th century. It was once quite “upscale;” It has zero closets. 

I know of new homes now that boast three-car garages and two walk-in closets in the master bedroom.  I confess; I could probably fill those extra storage spaces in a heartbeat.

But with what? If I live “locally,” and buy necessities from locally-owned stores, how much “stuff” will I accumulate? After my first child was born, we moved to the small North Florida town where my parents had grown-up. They had moved away after high-school, never to return except for visits to grandparents.  I was delighted to be able to shop at “Bruce’s”, the store owned by the parents of my mother’s best friend in high school, and at “The Lovely Shop” where she bought her homecoming gown. I bought my daughter’s first shoes at “The Children’s Shop” where my grandmother bought my first shoes. There was always a salesperson handy to find what you needed and they would alter it if needed too, for free. When a friend pointed out that I could have bought three shirts for the same price at the new K-Mart that had just been built on some old farmland, I remember thinking that I actually only needed the one shirt.

What is the difference in frugality and being cheap? I think it’s the difference between cost and price.  The price of the sweatshop-produced shirt bought cheap and sold by people barely making minimum wage at a big-box store (that was just beginning to take business from the family-owned stores downtown) was low. The actual cost – in human suffering, quality, community cohesiveness, and care - was very high. Within a year of my moving to Lake City, a huge mall was built near the interstate, K-Mart was joined by Wal-Mart, and the downtown shops began to close for good (to be replaced twenty years later with country-style shops and antique stores – a kitschy ode to what was lost).

Frugality is a virtue. Buying what is needed and rewarding good workmanship with your hard-earned dollar is good. Not taking more than you need, “living simply so others may simply live”, is right. But like so many other virtues, “frugality” has been used and warped by advertising that tells us if we’re smart we’ll buy three for the price of one, the conventionally–produced tomato from Holland over the locally raised one that costs pennies more, the plastic toys at a fraction of the price of the handmade ones. We’ll get more for our dollar, if we buy where they tell us to. We’d be stupid to throw away our hard-earned money on less. Meaning fewer. Because what we really, really want is More. Because we don’t have enough as things are, we aren’t enough without more. So buy it, buy it now. And buy more tomorrow. 

And be sure and build more closets. Because how many toys can a child play with anyway? And how many shirts are going to be worn or in the wash at the same time? And how many bright things that catch our eye on a down day shopping will we really put to good use? And how many things have we bought to make us happy or beautiful that didn’t quite do the job? They’re cramming closets everywhere. 

I know they’re cramming mine. And if all goes well, we will be moving into the no-closet house before long. Oh my.   

Closets - and What Lies Within

There's a lot of talk about "de-cluttering," a natural consequence of living in a consumer society I suppose. I have been inspired by numerous blogs for their motivation and practical guidelines.  Chile Chews' most recent post was a spoof, but she's got tons of helpful hits for making space in your life for... life.  Unclutterer and Fly Lady are quite famous for this in the blog world, and there's Zen Habits  and Project Simplify...  Google "clutter" and you will see.

I am a believer, and I have over the past few years regularly swept through closets and corners and have dutifully hauled off old, unused, and broken things - especially those with bad juju attached.  So why do I still have so much stuff??

I think it has something to do with the juju.  Several closet metaphors spring to mind.  For instance the "skeletons" therein, things I would rather keep "closeted" out of shame or guilt or grief.  Some are not inherently bad, but are still skeletons of the lost past: old college papers (I miss school) and old worksheets and artwork and photos from my children (three are gone; one is going). Then there are stacks of old patterns and piles of fabric that I planned to use someday to sew a dress for another little girl or make a quilt of pieces of ones from the past.  And an unused box of watercolors and lots of baby blankets.  Making decisions about what needs to go, even just facing them sometimes, is sad. At mid-life I am being reminded that there are some things I am never going to do. Touching the remnants of some of these stings. Some just make me miss the old, younger me.

And then there are the other skeletons. I am sure to find debris from my ex-husband scattered in the closets we shared for seven of the fifteen years they've been in my possession.  And there is a huge, black file cabinet filled to the point of the drawers sticking with the massive paperwork that accompanied Ben's cancer journey.  Blood counts, and bills, and x-rays, and print-outs of studies... I want it to just GO AWAY. You get the picture.

I am about as zen about closets as I am about life. Pema Chodron constantly reminds me to not avoid the pain of life, to sit with it, to accept it. (I listen over and over to her Awakening Compassion: Meditation Practices for Difficult Times because Alice Walker recommended it for people who tend to get mired in grief). But I am not good at this at all. I would rather close it behind a door and pretend it never happened (divorce, cancer) ...or is still happening (sewing little dresses, wearing little dresses (!), writing papers, dreaming of a future that included quilting up good memories).  I have a feeling I will be working on this for the rest of my life, so ingrained is that tendency to not accept the, ummm... "unacceptable."

But I have more than blogs for inspiration.  My family. My last grandparent died a little over a year ago (for a few months I was smack in the middle of five living generations).  During the dozen or so years that my grandparents were dying, my parents and other relatives were distracted from the dying and grieving process by the enormous amount of "stuff" to sort through.  One set of grandparents had several sheds on their property. When one filled up with stuff, my handy grandfather simply built another.  There were treasures in those sheds that we delighted in. But there were also things decayed beyond recognition or so damaged by rust and/or dry rot to have been rendered unsalvageable.  So much of it could have been used by someone else long ago if they had passed it on instead of saving it - and leaving it to their children to drive unceremoniously to the dump.

Which brings me to a lesson from another family member.  I visited my oldest son, Joe, at college last week. He was giving a talk based on a grant he had worked on about integration of this old southern school. Yes, I am proud of him.  But I was prouder of this:  I needed scissors to cut a piece of yarn off the socks I had just finished for him, but he handed me a knife instead.  The very beautiful, very expensive knife his "French father" from his exchange family in Toulouse had given him.  I had forgotten it and marveled at its beauty. Joe's name was engraved on it.  It reminded me of the goodness of that time and the generosity of this family so far away but so much like our own.  When I commented on it, Joe told me he hoped to give it away this summer and would have last summer except his friend wasn't home when he stopped by with it.  Luis lives in Guatemala and lives near the school Joe has taught at during the last couple summers.  Luis lost both of his legs when he fell from a train he was hitching a ride on when he was slaving as a migrant worker in the US.  He is home now, in a wheelchair, married with a little girl. He teaches basketball (and wisdom and fortitude) at the institute.  He would love that knife. When Joe told me this, I was a little sad at the thought of his giving away such a lovely gift.  (If I owned it, I would put it in a box and keep it on a closet shelf!).  But Joe simply said it was a gift that had brought him joy, that he didn't really need it, and it would give him pleasure to pass it on.  I think I will write that on my hand while I tackle all my stuff:  WWJD:  What would Joe do?