ROOM FOR A PONY

Exploring what life could be like if we weren’t buried in clutter, burdened with too many possessions, and surrounded by chaos.

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A few words about books

January 4th, 2013 · Excess of Possessions, Philosophy

Ah, books! — for some of us the hardest thing to part with. Book collecting is the most excused area of hoarding, often confused with intellectual prowess. But it’s still hoarding.

Remember that Umberto Eco book that was so popular, called The Name of the Rose? The one he wrote following that, Foucault’s Pendulum, was…. a bit of a tome. Few could get through it.

I’ll never forget the comment of one of my favorite teachers ever, the late Claire Kelly-Zimmer (art history, PSU) when it came up in our conversation over lunch the last time I saw her. She said, “Life is too short to spend any of it reading a long boring book by a man.”

With that one sentence, she freed up a good chunk of my life. Thank you, Claire.

And goodbye, all books that I do not love.

Next: book weeding: how I do it.

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Photo essay of junk that went bye-bye

January 3rd, 2013 · Excess of Possessions, Passing it on, Recycling

As promised, here are the exciting photos of what I extracted from my home during the month of December. As you look at each one, think about the amount of cubic space freed up by the removal of that much stuff.

 Here’s an ironing board (a 1920s one for midgets, replaced by a taller one); a magazine rack, which for some reason Lindi hates; an extra vacuum cleaner from way back when we combined households; the vacuum cleaner parts and their offspring. We took these over to Community Warehouse, a place that sells furniture and household stuff to people trying to set up house after rehab or prison or homeless-ness, or for one reason or another need a whole new start and don’t have much money.
Here’s an office chair, replaced by a new one that fits Lindi’s body better.
And here’s a box of books and a pile of books. The box I donated to an educational institution in that subject area, and the pile was a bunch of novels I donated to the Friends of the Library book sale. Next post I’ll let you in on my criteria for getting rid of books, which for many is the hardest thing to let go of.

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Wishing you a Simpler New Year!

January 1st, 2013 · Decluttering, Excess of Possessions

New Year’s resolutions!? To that I say “Pah!”

Everything is a work in progress. Why load up one poor day with so much weight!

Alright, I admit it. I do it too. Make vows of one sort or another. But at least I don’t beat myself with them! That’s not what they’re for.

If I make a resolution to clear out all my clutter by the end of January and I don’t make that deadline, does that mean I failed?

No, it means that I found out it takes longer than that. So I keep going. For how long? Till I finish? Finish what, specifically?

I keep selecting tinier goals. Such as, I’m going to liberate this particular room from clutter by the end of this month, and no fair schlepping it all into another room. Even that can turn out to be too big, depending on how much is in the room. So I go smaller. As in, I’m going to weed through the clothes in the closet this weekend.

Who cares about where we are in the calendar, really? I’m constantly re-assessing my progress throughout the year. It’s useless to throw up my hands in despair. Instead, I adjust and rejigger my intentions.

One needs encouragement. Inspiration. Other people who are doing the same thing I am.

Hence this blog.

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Inching up to the new year

December 28th, 2012 · Decluttering, Excess of Possessions, Trash Disposal

……and we all know that means:

Time for “Throw out the old year, make way for the new!”

In the 70s, in Naples, Italy — a city of three to four storey apartment buildings built up around the ancient villas and castles — throwing out the old year was taken as seriously as throwing  that ratty old couch out the window. (Haven’t you always wanted to do that?) Tooling around the city on New Year’s day you’d see a selection of smashed furniture, and even the random sink or toilet, hurled ruthlessly onto the cobblestones.

I always wondered if they had checked for passersby beforehand, or if a couple of people each grabbed a side, took a running start from across the room, charged full-tilt at the window and heaved the thing out in front of them at the last minute. Knowing the Neapolitans as I do, I would guess the latter.

Safety did not seem to be a big concern in that culture, at least not in those times. They probably screamed something while they did it and considered that fair warning. Plus if you were dumb enough to be out roaming the streets on New Year’s eve, what could you expect? You might say they had a sort of survival-of-the-smartest sort of approach toward safety.

I don’t know if they still throw out the old year in this way, but I do know that safety is a known concept among today’s Italians and has even trickled through to the Neapolitans. I could give some examples as  proof but I don’t want to get too far away from my point. …
…which was what? Oh yes, getting rid of stuff as a metaphorical throwing out of the old year. Very motivating. And there’s still time!

Next I’ll post a photo essay of the items I’ve gotten rid of during this last month, how and where, etc.

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The junkless Christmas tree

December 25th, 2012 · Decluttering, Excess of Possessions, Minimalism

Merry Christmas everyone! Here’s our minimalist earth-friendly tree, in the living room where we hauled it in for its third Christmas with us.

Purchased as an infant in 2009 at Portland Nursery, it is now 23 inches tall. We picked a slow-grower on purpose so we’d be able use it for as long as possible. The rest of the year it lives in its flower pot on our front steps.

That’s a string of mini-lights we throw around it. Last year we added small red bulbs left over from my childhood — remember the glass metallic looking ones that broke into a million deadly shards if you held them too tightly? — but this year we got even less complicated than that, and went with just the lights. In among that other Christmas stuff, we found that red glass star with a handy pipe cleaner sticking out of it — perfect for attaching it to the tip.

So where did we find these few simple decorations? In with about three box-loads of ornaments we’ve inherited from family moves. Now that we’re committed to this midget tree, and have seen how little we can get by with, we’ve identified another target purge area.

Anybody wants some vintage Christmas stuff?

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Packrat motives

December 22nd, 2012 · Excess of Possessions, Multiple use, The Packrat Mind

Here’s a perfect example of the kind of thing I save. I mean look at this! It snaps apart and back together. It came on a carrot peeler, holding the merchandise tag onto the product. Does it not look like the most useful thing in the world? It could easily be made into a little set of wheels for a mouse that had no back legs.

At this point my mind spins off into a whole story about what if I had such a mouse as a pet. Of course I have to fill in the back story about how the mouse ended up in this condition. Did it have mouse diabetes and have to have its legs amputated? Was he the test animal in some cruel lab experiment? And if so, what’s the dramatic and riveting story on how I rescued him from that lab?

Then there’d be the story on how I ingeniously outfitted him with the set of wheels to take the place of his back legs. He would love those little wheels, and he’d be so grateful. He’d come to me every morning, dragging himself along by his front legs and look up at me beseechingly as I’m typing away, and wait for me to put them on him. Then he’d scamper off at twice the speed of all the other mice…. happier than he’d ever been.

Other mice? Well yes, of course I’d probably have to get him some little playmates. But would friends still like me if I had mice running freely around my house? Or would they relegate me to the hoarder category and begin to pull away?

Whew! There sure is a lot to consider about such a scenario! I’d certainly have to be prepared to deal with the myriad issues that the simple act of saving this plastic bauble could bring up…

This is how my mind works, all day long, and this is why I’ll probably never accomplish anything noteworthy. This is also why I didn’t take drugs in college. My goal has always been to find ways to feel like I’m not already on drugs. And lastly, this is why I have so much junk.

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Silverfish: enemy of the packrat

December 20th, 2012 · Decluttering

I hope you all appreciate my visceral resistance to sullying my blog with this disgusting image, which I heroically overcame for the sake of your education.

As promised, and as pictured here, the mother of all motivators: silver fish.

Paper? They love it. And if you have it around, you’ll start having them around. Not so much with nice, new-ish books upright on the shelf. My theory is that they like lying-down paper the best. Except for musty and moldy paperbacks — they’ll take those any old way. But piles of newspapers and magazines? Their favorite. Especially if they’re on the floor. And corrugated cardboard boxes? Yum!

Oddly, even though their favorite meal may be on the floor, you’ll begin to find them elsewhere, such as between your sheets — an event which has been known to trigger a leaping, hollering conniption fit that can only be appeased by a complete change of linens, no matter the hour of night.

Normally I’m one of those slightly annoying people who cannot simply step on a spider but must coax it into a cup and take it outdoors and deposit it onto a new, carefully selected, spider-appropriate patch of real estate. But when it comes to silver fish, I will let the Navy Seals, Rambo, and the Green Berets into my home, all at the same time

Absent them, Lindi will do. She does a swift and efficient job , but without the uniform or the use of explosives.

And by the way, that’s my Girlfriend and yes, I’ve changed her name to protect her identity as she has not the faintest yearning for fame and notoriety of any degree.

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Paper: the worst thing to collect

December 19th, 2012 · Decluttering

The most depressing of all the junk a packrat can pack is: paper. And all things made of it. If you want a recipe for squalor, save stacks of newspaper and have a lot of cardboard boxes and brown paper bags around.

Paper decomposes faster than any other material — and did you know that’s what house dust is MADE OF? Yes it’s true: Paper and cloth sit there and decompose right before your eyes. (And decomposing paper SMELLS!) In fact, if you kept nothing made of natural fibers (impossible), you’d see your house dust load drastically reduced.

So, if you want to make the fastest headway toward neatening up, you’ll want to start with the paper! Throw out as much as you can, right away. If you must sort through it first, get some inexpensive plastic storage boxes to store all your paper stuff in until you can get to it. Yes this means buying more “stuff,” but as you go through your printed matter and discover you can throw out most of it, you can re-use those boxes for something else. At least you can stack them up compactly and know they aren’t churning out house dust. Plastic storage bins are a very re-usable commodity. And when you get down to a pair of underpants and a fork, you can pass them on to your still-packrat friends who seek to emulate you.

You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel once you get all the paper stuff removed from your view, and from your air supply! It’ll make you feel like you’re really getting somewhere — which will in turn push you to get even further! along the road to thingless-ness, that is. But in case all that’s not enough motivation for you, my next post will reveal the ultimate kick in the butt for getting rid of paper. I promise you will be cured forever.

My current mini-project: making this set of shelves into a thing of beauty. See that awful stack of magazines? Just you wait.

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The Christmas gift for the minimalist

December 18th, 2012 · Minimalism

Here’s the perfect gift for the One Who Wants Nothing. Or the One Who Needs Nothing. A endearing story called “The Gift of Nothing” by Patrick McDonnell. Though it’s allegedly a children’s book, it doesn’t matter. Any adult with “nothingness” inclinations would enjoy this as much as any child. The illustrations are enchantingly simple and the text itself is… well…. minimal. This would be perfect for that awkward situation when that special someone insists they don’t want any gifts and yet you badly want there to be a package under the tree with their name on it. It’s thin and small, so they can’t complain too much. If they prolong their objections, tell them it’s meant to be passed on to someone else after being read. But they won’t want to — because they will LOVE it too much.

Here’s a picture of it. Ignore the unattractive barcode in the upper left corner – this copy’s a library book.

 

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What to do with your used camping equipment

December 17th, 2012 · Excess of Possessions, Selling your stuff

I just got rid of my camp stove from the 70s. At the time, it was THE camp stove — the lightest and most compact one available. A Svea, made in Sweden.

This is an example of something you can’t just toss into the Goodwill bin. Most people wouldn’t know how to use it. Plus I’d be afraid that someone would blow themselves up in the attempt — or at least burn all their hair off. Darn thing was tricky to use. Self-immolation waiting to happen.

There’s a place here in Portland called Next Adventure, where they sell new and used camping equipment.

The guy in the basement where they buy the used stuff was entranced with it. He knew his camping equipment history, knew the stove and how to work it. In fact he was so excited about it that I started having second thoughts about parting with it. I wavered. But then I got ahold of myself. Wasn’t this what I wanted? To find someone who’d love it?

This is my whole problem with letting go of anything — I have to find a loving home for it first. And now I have. So shut up, Kate, I told myself sternly. Don’t you dare go back home with that thing!

And I didn’t.

He said, Well we don’t actually buy this type of thing for resale but we have a sort of little museum we’d like to display it in.

So there you go …. a part of my life has been deemed worthy of a museum. I got $35 store credit for my two stoves — that and another one I had — a weird, more contemporary type which someone had given me but that I’d never used.

No regrets. Yes, there was that moment of intense nostalgia, but I was over it by the time I got home. That was then, this is now; and now, I am not about to load up a bike with 800 pounds of extra-light camping gear and go for a ride. If I go for a bike ride that long, someone will be meeting me at a hotel with my luggage and a hot meal. Hooray for western civilization!

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