Too Much Stuff

Too much stuff. There's just too much stuff.
It'll hang you up, dealing with too much stuff.
~Delbert McClinton

My husband and I have been married for a little more than five years. He was 50 at the time, and I'm not far behind him. He lived in this awesome house that he built (well, OK, was still building in some ways), and I lived in the burbs with my young son. We knew there would be some challenges in combining our households. I'm a city girl, he's an earthy, do-it-yourself kind of guy. We intended to sort through all of our mountains of stuff before I moved to his home, then get married, and live happily ever after.

Shortly before the wedding, we bought an adorable 1945 house as a rental property. We're both crazy about buildings and architecture and projects. This was truly the shadow of things to come. We spent several months painstakingly restoring our new property, finishing up with three weeks to spare before the wedding. Fortunately, the caterers were friends. The wedding was wonderful. Life was good.

Then, it was time to move my stuff to his house. I have to say we handled it pretty well - we didn't kill each other. But the burden of stuff started to become undeniably apparent that day. It seems we are both packrats - er, I mean collectors. Everyone in my family is a collector. My brothers own more cars than you can count, British cars, muscle cars, weird and interesting cars. They own lots of other motorized toys like boats, too. Some of them even float. It made me feel better knowing that all these other people collect things like we do.

The stuff we have collected along the path of life has become a burden. It's everywhere, and dealing with it becomes so overwhelming that it's easier to ignore it and let it continue to accumulate. I take time off from work, promising myself that I will divest myself of significant quantities of stuff that will make a difference. Hours after sorting through boxes, I am paralyzed by guilt, indecisiveness, and nostalgia.

My dream is to have a home so uncluttered, so clean, and so absolutely Spartan that a lost set of car keys can remain lost only for the few moments it takes to make a 360 degree sweep of a room. That anything out of place stands out so clearly that it cannot remain lost for long. Reality is different.

I have to say that the stuff my husband has collected is infinitely cooler -- although a lot bigger -- than my stuff. He has wood cook stoves, enameled and fancy. He has wood burning heating stoves, black and ornate. He has gigantic beer signs from the sides of midwestern farmhouses. Oh, he has an eye for the collectible, the nostalgic, the huge. My stuff is smaller. I am attracted to shiny, colorful objects. I own way too much depression glass, ruby glass, and bits and pieces of antique Christmas ornaments. Not to mention the enormous collection of Hallowe'en stuff collected in the years when my son's annual party was the talk of the town.

Then there is the guilt collection. What to do with my mother's wedding gown? Not that anyone I know could fit into it even if they wanted to wear a 50+ year old dress. It has history and meaning. I have a ton of stuff that was my mother's. Some of it is meaningful, a few pieces are valuable, but I am somehow caught in a web of guilt that prevents me from disposing of it. I would give it to my nieces and nephew, let it become their burden, but they don't even have their own homes yet. Where would they put it?

Our kids don't want this stuff, neither does the Smithsonian. Family history is cool, and hard to come by in a day when we are all so mobile. Appreciating the things of our past is cool, too. There are many times that I yearn for the simpler life this stuff supposedly represents. But I have to tell you that carrying all this stuff around for years and years does not make my life simple. It takes up a ton of space, and weighs on me daily.

I'm not sure what it is that made my generation reach out and grab all the old stuff our parents had discarded. We are not alone. This is the song I hear all my peers singing.


I have a new plan. I am going to start putting stuff on Ebay. For every item I sell, I will include a "free gift." Oh, you bought a camera lens? Well, here's your free wood burning stove to go with it! You bought the depression glass? Here's your free vintage tractor! I figure that this way I will get rid of twice as much stuff as if I had a yard sale.

My husband is encouraging me. He wants to let go of this stuff, too. We cannot wait to be free of the mountains of stuff that we have spent so much of our lives aquiring. Less is more.