I'm Wondering If

Below are my original bold words about today's clean up clutter culture...

My original Instagram Post:

Our current passion for throwing away everything "extra" has something to do with the fact that life keeps us so busy we have no time to understand the value of some of those things....I'm thinking as a person with History training....the part of history that deals with the everyday life of cultures depends upon someone saving objects that may not seem important at the time. If we are all on the run, scrambling to catch up with what society demands of us, everything that doesn't contribute to our survival feels like something that needs to be jettisoned, tossed out of the wagon along the Oregon Trail. There are reasons for tossing....the need to move, the need to live in a small place with no storage space, a desire to share our material excess with others. But I'm sitting here looking at some family heirlooms and how their significance is not being passed on successfully to the next generation. Eventually they will become meaningless clutter and that bit of history will be lost. There are indeed times when I wish we would resist that urge to clean and simplify. Life is not always simple....

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and my add-on thoughts:

It's easy to make unequivocal statements online. Well, I did try to equivocate some, allowing there are valid reasons for divesting of possessions, but I was being pretty hard on some people, real and imaginary, who are cleaning out their excess possessions in order to "simplify their lives". The resulting rooms, in the clutter cleaning magazine articles, are always so upper class.....they often seem devoid of real life, but I guess that's what magazine photos are all about anyway.....how you can imagine living better than you actually have means to do. And I always wonder, what do people spend their time doing once they have achieved perfect simplification? Take a bus down to the beach and eat home made food wrapped in beeswax cloth after taking a walk picking up shore debris, or jet off to some other country and stay in a posh hotel, creating that shore debris?

By tossing so many things, it seems like we are trying to achieve some sort of blank slate....leave all those deeply colored and once deeply felt memories behind and replace them with off white, pale ice blue, light mint green, with little hints of creamy yellow and semi-transparent bubblegum pink to set things off.....once you have achieved that, nobody will be offended, sad, worried, or burdened by much of any emotions. You can now safely avoid that jab of memory when you open up that little useless box with your mom's art supplies in it, no longer need to feel those deep regrets when you look at that little useless doodad your ex gave you, back when life was more hopeful and less informed of the future. As they say, it's all good, don't worry.....

I know, I'm confusing actual deep cleaning with a magazine image of deep cleaning.  In truth, deep cleaning and subsequent organizing feels good. You've regained a bit of your control that had slipped away because you could no longer keep separate all of your acquisitions in any meaningful manner. Books stacked on top of clothes, sandwiched between newly purchased paints and beads. That surge of panic you feel when you realize a past due bill has been buried under there. That flash of anger when you trip over some of it on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The comments your family makes.....you know, you have ENOUGH.....

And I have recently accomplished some useful organization of art supplies. I can find a lot more things now than I could two months ago. And I have finally found a streamlined and effective way of inventorying my books. On the most basic of spreadsheets after fiddling with some less useful online systems. I have found several unknown duplicates, which will free up shelf space and allow me to make gifts to a few people. All I have to do is see if my autofill brings up both the same title and the same author, as being already entered. Locate them by shelf, verify, and breathe a sigh of relief that I may not be buried under such a tall pile of excess books when the "Big One" hits (aka earthquake, for non-locals).

Still, my feelings remain mixed. Cluttered, if you will. I know myself too well: blank spots will need to be filled with more stuff. That is just the way it has always worked. I accumulate stuff until times become demonstrably hard, then I stop, with little hard feelings. I know about my basic needs: shelter, food, water, warm clothing, protection. I know not to sacrifice those things. It's just when life is running smoothly and there is money to spare, I start to tip to the dark side. I am a hoarder more than a hunter. I don't like risks.....I would much much rather spend $40 on books and art supplies than on a slot machine. I like tangibles for my money, travel being the exception. And if one month I clear it out completely, the next month I will start to fill that space all over again with new stuff.

Sorry, adoring online public, this post has been nothing but a ramble, held down on top with an image to make it look interesting if my blog url is posted somewhere. That's the way it goes. And this is the way it will be: I will continue to collect books, art supplies, unused threads, ribbons, fabric, beads, in a multitude of colors. The more color choices the better. I have a growing collection of "art bits"....small experimental things that aren't worth framing alone, but have not yet had the embellishments required to make them truly interesting. So be it. So fire me already. I don't invite super neat people into the inner sanctum, I suspect all are judging me to some degree. As I, in turn, judge them for either their greater heaps of disorganized possessions, or their sleek, soft and empty lifestyles and offenseless surroundings. 

As long as I don't harm myself while seeking the bathroom in the middle of the night, as long as a stack of books doesn't collapse upon me or my paints spontaneously combust, I'm OK with the mess.....mostly.....  My kids will drop hints, I will choose not to entertain my friends in my home, I will sometimes buy duplicate books, but the world will go on. If times get rough I will stop buying so much. If my health fails, I will look around for a public art venue to donate much of it to. If the fires are too close to home next time, I may escape with the clothes on my back and may choose from then on to live fancy free of possessions. We may have our more modern version of the Oregon Trail where clinging to the old life could cause us to perish (those who have played the game, remember the danger sound it makes as you are crossing a river and the overloaded Conestoga wagon tips over and you must swim to safety? Something like "dup-DUP!")

The world will go on.  Or maybe it won't, that's not always a given in our modern life.....