I'm hauling out. With every post-shopping haul out, I feel freer, less attached to crap. I can walk around without cringing while passing the hall closet. I feel proud.
I made space by letting go of...
4 Kids DVDs, 1 cd, 2 box sets of tv shows DVDs
a black metal magazine holder and matching card holder from anthropologie
An old umbrella that has no hole for hanging and is too enormous
organizers from ikea, target and the container store
big blue swiss ball, dh was relieved
comfort u pillow, blankets
clothes from j crew, Jeremy's, and anthropologie. Pricier things I'd been hoarding that I finally let go.
3 porcelain vases
1 branch
Kitchen crap: Ikea spice organizer, cake pans for 'tier' cakes
1 crate and barrel two tiered fruit basket that was way too big
cook books to pastry chef friend: lauduree, momofuku milk bar (I'm not a pastry chef)
40 books to the Los Angeles Public Library, including Martha Stewart's craft encyclopedia
Kids stuff: 1 walker toy, 1 kids carseat organizer, 1 rocking horse
1 radio Sony
1 clock white crate and barrel
stash of foam for felt crafting
2 dolls ayumi uyama styled vintage made in Japan, kids didn't want it either
I didn't sell these things. I just let them go to be resold elsewhere. The money earned is not worth my time. I'm making value by saving time and future effort from handling these things.
Update on the compact:
I haven't bought anything for myself. Haven't felt the need to. But I will re-sign up for "pop physique" monthly unlimited classes as soon as my jury duty next week is over. And there are a few digital books on minimalism I want to get. I really enjoy reading other people's perspectives on losing their crap.
For my daughter's birthday, I bought dresses from second-hand consignment stores in Los Angeles: Blue Bird, The Green Bean and Grow Kid Grow. I found high end designer clothes made not in china but the u.s., france and denmark for the same price I'd pay for new clothes from Target made in who knows where sweatshop. I didn't buy her a toy, but my husband got her a small mirror that she wanted.
shopping is a burden
I've been letting go of a ton of stuff thanks to this blog! Blogging galvanizes my decluttering, materializing my dream of minimalism.
Shopping is a burden.
Shopping can get addictive as an escape mechanism. But escape is temporary and home awaits.
Decluttering will not change the problem if the underlying behavior is not challenged.
The supposition of the American crapitalist system is that shopping is recreation and relaxation. But that is wrong. Shopping is a burden. It causes a financial deficit by definition. It creates debt. It creates shame.
If you buy "it!" and you bring it home, you might:
Or you might not. When you watch Hoarders, you see piles of unidentifiable shopping bags with unidentifiable stuff. And new things in boxes. It is too burdensome to open the object. The piles are preferable.
The hunting and gathering done, the shopped for object has lost its value. It sits useless as clutter at home.
Many hoarders try so hard to save everything. Yet they are so wasteful. Shopping is not saving. Shopping is wasting.
Shopping is a burden.
Shopping can get addictive as an escape mechanism. But escape is temporary and home awaits.
Decluttering will not change the problem if the underlying behavior is not challenged.
The supposition of the American crapitalist system is that shopping is recreation and relaxation. But that is wrong. Shopping is a burden. It causes a financial deficit by definition. It creates debt. It creates shame.
If you buy "it!" and you bring it home, you might:
- remove it from its shopping bag.
- throw away or recycle your shopping bag, raising eco guilt.
- remove it's packaging.
- throw away or recycle it's packaging, raising eco guilt.
- wash it if it's a textile or kitchen item
- give it a place, otherwise it is clutter.
- contain it. it may require a larger container--a piece of furniture.
- use it or use it up
- get rid of it eventually
Or you might not. When you watch Hoarders, you see piles of unidentifiable shopping bags with unidentifiable stuff. And new things in boxes. It is too burdensome to open the object. The piles are preferable.
The hunting and gathering done, the shopped for object has lost its value. It sits useless as clutter at home.
Many hoarders try so hard to save everything. Yet they are so wasteful. Shopping is not saving. Shopping is wasting.
Letting go of containers
Since I've been vigilant and diligent about removing crap, I have much less need to contain my world. In the past few days, I've let go of a hundred containers--various vessels from vases and trays to acrylic cosmetic cases, plastic ikea boxes and aluminum tin trays. I can't even remember what I got rid of--and it was only hours ago I let them go! I took the time to wash each item in hot sudsy water. Now that I'm exclusively buying used items, I want the items from my home to recirculate in the world in their best condition for all those other like-minded people who are buying used.
Containers are not the solution. Containers contribute to the problem by giving a false solution that mystifies the real problem. The real problem is you have too much and you need to remove that stuff from your house! Containers enable middle-class approved hoarding--all those neat boxes with labels, just like Martha! But the dread of having too much crap remains, enervating you of hope for a truly clean home.
Containers can multiply with their sly appearance of usefulness, cluttering up pantries, closets and garages waiting to be used 'someday.' But this is precisely their menacing power. They beckon us to fill them with crap, to buy duplicates, and to store unloved things that might help someone else if we'd only free up the contained.
Containers waste your time. You sort your crap into different containers, label them, put them away. But then, you have more crap that you want to hide in the back closet, so you open, close and shift your containers, re-shifting them here to there to another there in a perpetual search for more space.
You can have more space. Get rid of the things you're hiding. If whatever's in the container is for 'someday,' that is a clue it needs to be removed immediately. If it's for some concrete date in the calendar system (the turkey roaster for thanksgiving, for instance), then it has dignity and reason to take up room in your home. Chances are, you can replace what you are storing/hiding easily when 'someday' actually materializes.
By removing the someday clutter, you are learning to redeem yourself of your crapitalist shopping habits. We have been taught to experience shopping as a leisure activity, as if browsing in stores was a fulfilling mode of being. No--browsing is for ghosts, alienated people disconnected from nature and community who embalm their loneliness with lifeless things, while pretending buying something equals an accomplishment. It does not. Sorry. I was there. I purchased many a stupid things and wasted thousands of dollars. Removing these poor judgment purchases is what finally revealed to me I have been a thoughtless and wretched accumulator of crap in the service of corporate global crapitalism. I was suckered by false desires.
I'm by no means perfect now. But I feel so much lighter and happier without the stuff it's like a miracle!
I no longer feel compelled to house and protect things useless to me now.
There's no little voice demanding: clean, organize, clean, organize. Without the crap, the chatter has dissipated. This is such an empowering feeling--I would like everyone to feel it.
Containers are not the solution. Containers contribute to the problem by giving a false solution that mystifies the real problem. The real problem is you have too much and you need to remove that stuff from your house! Containers enable middle-class approved hoarding--all those neat boxes with labels, just like Martha! But the dread of having too much crap remains, enervating you of hope for a truly clean home.
Containers can multiply with their sly appearance of usefulness, cluttering up pantries, closets and garages waiting to be used 'someday.' But this is precisely their menacing power. They beckon us to fill them with crap, to buy duplicates, and to store unloved things that might help someone else if we'd only free up the contained.
Containers waste your time. You sort your crap into different containers, label them, put them away. But then, you have more crap that you want to hide in the back closet, so you open, close and shift your containers, re-shifting them here to there to another there in a perpetual search for more space.
You can have more space. Get rid of the things you're hiding. If whatever's in the container is for 'someday,' that is a clue it needs to be removed immediately. If it's for some concrete date in the calendar system (the turkey roaster for thanksgiving, for instance), then it has dignity and reason to take up room in your home. Chances are, you can replace what you are storing/hiding easily when 'someday' actually materializes.
By removing the someday clutter, you are learning to redeem yourself of your crapitalist shopping habits. We have been taught to experience shopping as a leisure activity, as if browsing in stores was a fulfilling mode of being. No--browsing is for ghosts, alienated people disconnected from nature and community who embalm their loneliness with lifeless things, while pretending buying something equals an accomplishment. It does not. Sorry. I was there. I purchased many a stupid things and wasted thousands of dollars. Removing these poor judgment purchases is what finally revealed to me I have been a thoughtless and wretched accumulator of crap in the service of corporate global crapitalism. I was suckered by false desires.
I'm by no means perfect now. But I feel so much lighter and happier without the stuff it's like a miracle!
I no longer feel compelled to house and protect things useless to me now.
There's no little voice demanding: clean, organize, clean, organize. Without the crap, the chatter has dissipated. This is such an empowering feeling--I would like everyone to feel it.
Hoarders
Watching shows on Hoarders is educational. I learn a lot about fear. Hoarders, as a group, seem scared: of people, of intimacy, of decisions, of emotions.
As a group, they seem to have experienced trauma, a horrible loss that upsets their sense of temporality. They seem unaware of how time works.
Likewise, their sense of physical mobility seems compromised. They seem like shut-ins. They seem to prefer immobility. They are stuck to their stuff.
The stuff is not their real problem. Their real problem is ? feeling threatened. Fight or Flight or Relax? How can they breathe and experience meditation / the relaxation technique if the air is stinky? Their reaction is flight. They are sensitive human beings who choose to cocoon in their homes with stuff to protect themselves from the cruelties, humiliations, loneliness and feelings of failure associated with not feeling safe and good enough in late capitalist modernity.
I have used the word "they" but in reality, we are all hoarders. We who have been born into the capitalist system have been taught to buy things absentmindedly and accumulate a ton of stuff, much of it disposable, plastic and landfill-destined. If you cannot do an inventory of your home, then you are a hoarder. It's harsh, but beneath the facade of middle-class perfection, the truth is excessive closets and garages, wasteful grocery habits and delusional shopaholism. This is not sustainable.
If you are trying to organize your house all the time, the problem is you shop too much. You have too much crap. Whether or not you want to admit it, you have things in common with hoarders on tv. When hoarders on tv say things like "I might need it some day," correlate it to your own excuse patterns. This insight will lead to freedom. Aren't you sick of cleaning and organizing your home? Get rid of the stuff you don't use. Share it with others who might need it. Private property is a delusion. Private property is temporary. Stuff is tentative. When you let it go, you get that space back. Space and time are the most important luxuries for a free soul.
As a group, they seem to have experienced trauma, a horrible loss that upsets their sense of temporality. They seem unaware of how time works.
Likewise, their sense of physical mobility seems compromised. They seem like shut-ins. They seem to prefer immobility. They are stuck to their stuff.
The stuff is not their real problem. Their real problem is ? feeling threatened. Fight or Flight or Relax? How can they breathe and experience meditation / the relaxation technique if the air is stinky? Their reaction is flight. They are sensitive human beings who choose to cocoon in their homes with stuff to protect themselves from the cruelties, humiliations, loneliness and feelings of failure associated with not feeling safe and good enough in late capitalist modernity.
I have used the word "they" but in reality, we are all hoarders. We who have been born into the capitalist system have been taught to buy things absentmindedly and accumulate a ton of stuff, much of it disposable, plastic and landfill-destined. If you cannot do an inventory of your home, then you are a hoarder. It's harsh, but beneath the facade of middle-class perfection, the truth is excessive closets and garages, wasteful grocery habits and delusional shopaholism. This is not sustainable.
If you are trying to organize your house all the time, the problem is you shop too much. You have too much crap. Whether or not you want to admit it, you have things in common with hoarders on tv. When hoarders on tv say things like "I might need it some day," correlate it to your own excuse patterns. This insight will lead to freedom. Aren't you sick of cleaning and organizing your home? Get rid of the stuff you don't use. Share it with others who might need it. Private property is a delusion. Private property is temporary. Stuff is tentative. When you let it go, you get that space back. Space and time are the most important luxuries for a free soul.
A parsing error was encountered
My new blog has encountered a feed problem. New posts aren't being updated because "A parsing error was encountered."
I am already thinking about disposing this less-than-30-days blogsite and starting a new one.
I am already thinking about disposing this less-than-30-days blogsite and starting a new one.
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