In which I have too much shit again.

It has come to my attention that I do not like to own too many things. It just bugs me when I have more stuff than I can interact with in any given year.

This may be my real nature, or it may be the result of having over the years lost entire households worth of stuff and realizing that stuff always, in one way or another, equals work and woe; but either way I just feel claustrophobic when my belongings start leaking out of cupboards and off of shelves, or when in order to find something I have to dig through six other things I haven’t used in three years.

When I moved into the upstairs bedroom five years ago, I had exactly one jeepful of belongings. I moved 80% of it into my room, and the other 20% — household items I had no need of here in this fully-furnished home — into the attic.

That perfectly adequate amount of stuff has bloated. There are no empty spaces on my shelves; the floor of my closet is packed with shit; my stash has quadrupled (I have boxes of yarn) and I no longer seem to knit very much anyway.

G’ma and I dropped the equivalent of ten lawn bags off at Goodwill last month, but I still have too much shit. It’s hard to get rid of excess stuff. I know most people just throw it out, but that’s not my way. I want it re-purposed, donated, or recycled, and that takes effort and time. The idea of putting perfectly useful items into a landfill because you’re too lazy to get it to where it should be offends me, but man sometimes I just want to fill up the dumpster and call it a day just to get this shit out of my closet so I can find my Polaroid cameras!

Do not even get me started on the multiple computer and monitor carcasses my family members have given me ‘just in case you can use it!’ that are heavy as fuck and have to somehow get to e-cycle.

The day after the Goodwill run I filled two more bags with clothes. I barely even buy clothes and I’m still getting rid of stuff my aunt gave me when I first moved here, stuff I’ve literally never worn. As for the rest of it, I have no idea where all this stuff even comes from.

Why do I have these stacks of CDs? Why do I have so much defunct electronic equipment? What do all these adapters go to? What’s all this miscellaneous crap in this basket? Did these jeans ever fit anyone? How did I get so many film cameras? Why do I have a trapeze dress for a rhinoceros? What am I supposed to do with these posters? Why do I have to keep so many pieces of paper? Am I required to keep these well-intentioned but useless Christmas gifts?

Gah! Clutter! I hate it! I don’t want to own this crap. I don’t want to be surrounded by things. I want air and light and space. I want the things I own to be things I need and use, and not tchotchkes and clutter that engender guilt each time they’re encountered.

It’s amazing how much shit one acquires with no effort, though. Nature really does hate a vacuum.