What we keep. What we discard.

It’s been a while, but I’ll start knocking out blogs on a more regular basis in the months ahead. There are a lot of things percolating in my head that need an outlet, and one just came to light this morning as I read two articles in The New York Times about collecting – or discarding – stuff. 

I’ve written about this topic before. In fact, one of my first blogs (July of 2010!) was about my “saver” father and my “discarder” mom, and how these two diametrically opposed characteristics shaped me into the person I am today. Since the pandemic started nearly two years ago, there have been many articles written about decluttering and how it can improve people’s lives. After all, clutter has been shown to increase anxiety, put strain on familial relationships, affect sleeping habits, ruin household incomes, and the like. But discarding possessions also carries an emotional burden. My father and my wife’s mother are both contending with discarding in fairly short order that which they spent a lifetime accumulating, and it can be an overwhelming process: it’s hard to know where to begin, hard to know how to part with something that you feel defines you or is a part of the grand narrative of your life’s story, and on a more practical level, it’s not often apparent what to actually do with the stuff one’s chosen to discard. Who’ll take the collection of fishing lures? The seashells? The artwork? The National Geographic magazines? Should you just throw them out? You can’t, can you? After all the care you’ve given these objects for so many years?

Sadly, a dumpster or recycling bin is where a lot of our stuff will go – whether it’s before we die or after – and I imagine that this realization gives us visceral feeling of our own mortality, recognition that all that we’ve accumulated will be gone when we are gone, that most of what we leave behind is people’s memories of our existence, and that in a generation or two, even that will be gone. We will have never existed.

Weighty stuff!

But dang, I love that collectors exist. I need then to exist, even if it means that they lead stressful lives because of it. I love that the pandemic inspired Iowan barber Brian Hogan to build a video rental store in his basement! I love that there are record stores and vintage clothing stores, and that my friend has a collection of tickets stubs and signed programs and photos of the concerts he’s attended over the decades. I love that another friend of mine recently purchased an antique Coke vending machine to accompany his jukebox of 45 rpm records. I love that I have a program, pennant and tickets stubs from the 1957 World Series hanging on my wall. I love that my paternal grandfather saved so much stuff that I could practically write a novel about his live in the 1920s. I had to discard much of what he saved, but I kept enough. Enough to have an idea of what his life was like, what he was like.

In 2012, I quoted Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut about how views on possessions change over time, and what was once cherished garners nothing more but indifference later in life.  This is likely the natural order of things. 

I’m not quite there yet. The pandemic forced me to go through some items, and while I was happy to discard clothing, storage bins, framed artwork and old furniture, the stuff I’m keeping – the record albums, the photographs, books, letters, memories of my children – this stuff I’m holding onto with gusto. This stuff is a manifestation of who I am. My kids may hate me for it. Their kids may one day hate me for it.  But for now these possessions still define me. There may be a day when that changes, when I can freely discard what I own without – as Rabbi Plaut wrote – an ounce of regret. But if my father is any indication, that ain’t gonna happen!

And I may one day take a cue from Brian Hogan and open a record rental store in my basement.

When Stuff No Longer Matters

A classic scene from 1999’s Best Picture, American Beauty:  Kevin Spacey makes a move on wife Annette Bening in the living room, and for a moment it appears that the two will rekindle what’s long been lost.  Annette’s character notices the beer in her husband’s hand.

A:            You’re going to spill beer on the couch.

K:            So what?  It’s just a couch.

A:            This is a four thousand dollar sofa, upholstered in Italian silk.  This is not just a couch.

K:            It’s...just...a...couch!  This isn’t life!  This is just stuff.   

I love that scene, and not just for the entertainment value; it beautifully captures what’s wrong with many people’s lives.  How many of us have become possessed by our possessions? 

Lately, I’ve pondered where our desire for “stuff” comes from, because after a decade of watching my kids accumulate books, Legos, jewelry and stuffed animals, it’s become apparent that collecting things begins early on.  Even for the very young, something about possession – of calling an object one’s own – is appealing, so that it’s not enough to just see a pretty rock on the Lake Michigan shore; the rock must be picked up and added to a collection of other rocks.  Whether this is a completely natural instinct or the product of a consumer society is open to debate, I suppose, but as a child, I possessed many things, and most of them cost nothing: rocks, pinecones, aluminum, pennies, beer cans, a bad attitude and shot-gun shells. 

(That last one is a bit perplexing.  Why my parents allowed me to wander unsupervised in the woods behind our home where people apparently shot loaded weapons is just one more in a long line of unanswerable questions about my youth.)

When we become adults, most of our childhood collections are discarded or stowed away in boxes, but we manage to fill the void with other kinds of collections.  When my wife and I moved into a bigger house in 2000, we had to fill it with something, and although we didn’t call our new purchases “collections,” they served the same function.  Instead of scanning the earth for rocks and pine cones, I scanned store shelves for paintings and frames, accents and knickknacks, not to mention storage bins for the collections of our children.  And unlike the treasures of my youth, these new acquisitions cost money.

Well into my forties now, the idea of accumulating more “stuff” is not only unappealing, it’s terrifying. What I used to consider important – my CD collection, for instance – I now view as little more than a nuisance.  I’m trying to stick to a new rule: if something comes into my house, something must leave my house.  It may lead to more yard sales, but it should also lead to less clutter and less stress.  And maybe it’ll even help me to avoid that impulse buy.

I recently read the following quote by Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut about growing older and how our views on possessions change over time. 

Several years ago, we sold our home and disposed of many things, including significant parts of our library.  Surprisingly, disposing of our cherished acquisitions collected during three and a half decades stirred not an ounce of regret.  After all, books are only things that join the grand parade of desire/ acquisition/ possession/ discard...having grown old, we stop acquiring things and instead acquire a growing indifference to them.

I wonder if we all grew indifferent a little earlier, if we might be better off.