I’ve mentioned that I’m moving.\u00a0 I’ve been packing boxes here and there for weeks now.\u00a0 The moving company I hired has packing tips, a FAQ, and a blog all talking about the best way to move.\u00a0 Getting an early start is on one of those lists, and so is the admission that packing things for one’s self invariably leads to moments of delay and nostalgia.<\/p>\n
It’s dawned on me, in my many delighted discoveries amid the jumble of my own stuff, that what I have has been hiding the things I have that I love.\u00a0 It is a myriad of circumstances that has amounted to the stuff I have now and I have been feeling suffocated by it for sometime.\u00a0 I like to weed out the ‘it’s ok’ from the ‘I love that so much’ at regular intervals, and I have fallen behind in this chore.\u00a0 I think utilitarian and aesthetically pleasing should be the same.\u00a0 I think that everyday plates and fine china should be the same.\u00a0 I think a thing is useless if it is not used, no matter how expensive or precious it may be.\u00a0 And I think that useful things are only necessary-evils (perhaps unnecessary) when their form and construction does not delight the user.<\/p>\n
I am not a minimalist.\u00a0 I love mementos.\u00a0 I am the kid who could not pass by a shiny object in a parking lot without picking it up and evaluating its potential to come home with me.\u00a0 But I do not simply collect all things teddy bear (OK, I did when I was 10).\u00a0 The things I gather about me are varied in appearance, not easily predictable, and precious because they mean something to me.\u00a0 This goes for a growing personal library as well.<\/p>\n
But, how often have I bought a book because it was of passing interest and\/or I really did not want to leave the store without a purchase?\u00a0 How many of the things around me am I keeping because someone at sometime gave them to me and I don’t want to run the risk of insulting them?\u00a0 How many things do I have that are precious to someone else and not me?\u00a0 These things that I don’t care so much for have been blocking my view to the things for which I do care very much.\u00a0 They are not rubbish; they are not entirely lacking in meaning, but they could be much better put to use by someone who would like them better than I do.<\/p>\n
I have been walking into my apartment and heading for one small corner every evening.\u00a0 My stuff lives in the rest of the apartment, not me.\u00a0 When I bring home any new precious object, I keep it on the coffee table, in a semi-conscious effort to keep it from being swallowed up by everything else.\u00a0 How have I let it get this way?<\/p>\n
I am packing boxes, sorting things as I go and making piles of things to go to donation.\u00a0 I am packing boxes, becoming excited at the coming opportunity to use all my great stuff when I unpack it.\u00a0 All my great stuff has been here the whole time, and I had forgotten.\u00a0 My view of it had been blocked by everything else that has been here too.<\/p>\n
I have stored things before, boxes that traveled around with my mother because I could not take them to college with me.\u00a0 Extra stuff that didn’t have a place and ended up in a bin in the closet.\u00a0 I have often proclaimed that if I didn’t remember what was in it, then I didn’t need any of it anymore.\u00a0 That should go for drawers and shelves and closets too.\u00a0 Can you shut your eyes and imagine every thing in the cupboard next to the stove?\u00a0 How about the coat closet?\u00a0 If you went there and looked would you say ‘Awesome!\u00a0 I forgot all about that; I gotta use it now!’ or would you say ‘oh, yeah, I forgot about that, I’m always moving it out of the way?’\u00a0 I found way too many, ‘oh, yeah’ items and I don’t want to move with them.\u00a0 I don’t want them in the way of the ‘Awesome!’ things anymore.<\/p>\n