I LOVE FALL BONFIRES. I especially like the big ones where people throw
in leaves, branches, pallets, and things they have found from the cleaning out of their land. It’s a celebration of eliminating the waste and debris of our lives. I have decided my next contribution will be our wedding crystal. I’ve done an inventory of things in the house and my offices. Jen and I got into a reduction kick after reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. We de-cluttered, gave away, or threw away all the things that didn’t give us joy. We got rid of a lot: clothes, books, videos, furniture, decorations… a long list. I gave away a $2,500 suit because I wasn’t going to wear it. Jen gave away boxes of things; I was not invited to review their inventory. I was just glad to see the boxes go. We said to all the items, “Thank you for your service,” and sent them on their way. The price did not matter—it was whether it was going to be used or gave us joy. Probably got rid of 30% of our stuff. We are still de-stuffing our lives. We did not do this exercise for each other’s things, or we could possibly have shaved off a decent additional amount. The decision not to assist one another is an example of the unstated but understood wisdom of a successful twenty-year marriage. As I was considering the bonfire, I decided that the exercise was possibly too small, or at least there were additional cathartic opportunities. Let me add a few candidates that should have been tossed into the list: WEDDING CHINA We spent hours picking ours out. The pattern was
important, color, full item list. Serving platters, dessert plates, salt and The L i gh t n e ss o f Tra sh Ca ns
pepper shakers, and gravy tureens. Gravy tureens? We have been married twenty years and have used this set ten times. Actually, because we got twelve settings (of course we got twelve, because I believe the Bushes and Hiltons must entertain like this nightly), we have used only half of these items. So, on a usage basis, we have used half of the service half of our marriage. It’s not calculus to determine that out of about a gazillion hours we have gotten about nine minutes of value. On a dollar-per-minute assessment, our wedding china must be the equivalent of a shah’s private jet. It should go. I like the comedian Gallagher’s approach, which might involve tossing items one at a time and hitting them with a sledgehammer on their way into the flames, but time should be a consideration. BOOKS The dream… the shelves of books that represented years of
accumulated favorites, masterpieces, and the gifts you are going to get to. I have moved company offices and houses a combined dozen times, and we had boxes of books we never opened that we moved again and again but never quite got to unpacking. It’s pathological! If you do get to unpacking them, you put them in a place of some prominence. They lean against each other, rarely touched except to dust, on some shelf, like bowling trophies and mounted baseballs signed by long-retired players whose impact on the game has to be explained to visitors. Pick the musthaves, donate the rest. (Someone reading this is smoked because they have first editions of four or five of my books. You can chuck them first if it makes you feel better about being angry I wrote this.) WEDDING SILVER Take all of what was said about the china and you
can apply it to the wedding silver. You have the benefit of storing something that has almost no use in a smaller place, but you do have to rub it with a cloth (called polishing I think) every time you use it. It won’t give you much space when you get rid of it, but it will feel almost as good as the china when you dump it. The benefit of the exercise is the same, but would be more enjoyable because the item sizes are smaller and provide more opportunities to throw wooden targets into the fire first and then aim each piece at the targets. Think ninja training without the cool clothes.
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TRAVEL TRINKET PURCHASES I am writing this section on a cruise.
I am watching carved coconuts, hand-dyed dresses, necklaces and bracelets of shells from the local beaches. My favorites are the things you have to ship because they are too big to get on the plane when you get off of the boat. We all have this stuff. It was a reminder of “that time when we went to that one place and we haggled with that one lady.” It could also be my favorite, “I can’t believe that you were so drunk you bought this when we were in…” This stuff is not to be owned. You can extort using photos just as easily as items. Chuck it. (I can only say these things because I personally have owned the 44oz drink holder that you can walk New Orleans with, the carved coconut that looks like a pirate, and countless pieces of shell jewelry.) WEDDING DRESSES Take a one-use-only garment in white. Get pho-
tographed in it, embrace your closest friends and family in it, smile until your teeth hurt while wearing it. Now eat and drink like it is near to the last day of your life with other people who are doing the same. Drag the train through the variously not immaculate floors, cake, and red wine. Go to your first married night’s honeymoon and gently set it aside on a chair. Send it to the cleaners, who promise to return it to you as it was, wrapped in plastic, preserved in a box. You put it on a shelf for 20+/- years and hope one of your daughters will wear it to her wedding. Tastes change. As do shapes, styles and the yet unresolved mommy issues of a couple decades. For your daughter(s) this dress possibly does not quite fit, and it must be forced to fit her. I can’t imagine a single moment of tears or disagreement. Sounds like a lot to carry around for twenty years. This may be too much to include in the list, but again, these are suggestions. COLLECTIONS The shameless are my favorites, like yard gnomes. I
believe that people who have a yard gnome collection are just putting it out there, like the sixty-year-old Russian guys in speedos you find at the odd resort. There is no clearer way of telling the world, “I know what you think, and I truly don’t care!” There are collections that we all have for purposes we have forgotten except for habit. Of course, there is the The L i gh t n e ss o f Tra sh Ca ns
illusion of increasing value. eBay will tell you if this is truth or illusion. A few clicks once per week, and you can watch your “stock market of stuff” value rise and fall. Beanie babies, Pokémon cards, bobble heads, beer mirrors, ice globes from cities that actually don’t have ice, like Orlando. Whatever the collection, there has to be a consideration that not only is it a representation of a future Hoarders episode, but it is a bad trade. Chuck them, and hope you get different colors when they burn. GUILT ITEMS I have a shirt in my closet that I only wear when my
mother-in-law is in our house. We put out certain items when my mom is here. There is a little longer list than this. It is the guilt collection. It is the stuff that you only keep until the person who gave it to you is in an assisted living home, you are in an assisted living home, or one of you is dead. These guilt items have gotta go. STUFF FOR YOUR GRANDKIDS “The grandkids someday are going
to love these…” Insert stuff they won’t care about. Lincoln logs, baseball mitts, the original Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie series, any doll, action figure, or item of costuming. Donate it, including the box you were storing it in. They have moved on. Those were your toys, your interests, your era. Get rid of it unless you enjoy faked pleasure and only momentary play. LIQUOR Don’t age liquor; drink it with your friends. Every day or cele-
bration is a moment to share. You don’t know when they or you are going to not be able to enjoy it. Besides, it’s booze, not a Stradivarius violin. This is commentary, by the way. I am not encouraging this for the bonfire, unless you want to bring it as refreshment to the bonfire. INSTRUMENTS Speaking of Stradivarius violins, if you have not played
an instrument in a year, get rid of it. Maybe you have a baby grand or something like that—then it’s not an instrument; it’s furniture. I mean, for the love of Pete, a ukulele? A trombone? Who are you saving these for? Donate or sell them.
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THINGS YOU BOUGHT ON TV We have all bought something on
television. Don’t even try to say you haven’t. I tried. I swore I hadn’t. Then we did this cleaning thing and I found all of this stuff in cleaning closets that were all supposed to do something impossible that would forever fix an unfixable problem. Keep the best and chuck the rest. Don’t pretend or defend. HALF OF THE JUNK IN YOUR GARAGE I don’t have to provoke. You
know I’m right. Rent the dumpster. Shed a tear, put on the leather gloves, and start throwing it away. If it is worth any amount less than $100, throw it away. It is not worth selling it. It is better to chuck it. Remember, these are just candidates. I am saying that these are some of the items you may have missed in your tidying-up moments. One thing in the inventory that I have noticed we did not get rid of: we did not get rid of one single napping blanket. That is not very impressive if you thought we had one napping blanket, but we have a napping couch on each floor of a three-floor house, if you include the basement. Two couches on the main floor, if you include the one in the main room. In my office at work there is a killer napping couch from Restoration Hardware that, on sale, cost about a semester’s tuition for a state school. Near each napping location there is a big basket of blankets—I mean big. The basement has a full trunk, plus more blankets draped over every soft surface down there. Main floor basket has six or seven blankets. Upstairs there are five blankets in the basket, plus whatever those woven and quilted things are that decorate rooms. We believe in naps. At the office, I have two office blankets only because I have not put new ones on my Christmas list. I am willing to throw away an entire wedding set of crystal before touching one napping blanket. Comfort, function, and personal style are high on the trade value board. Fad, flash, and “conversation pieces” are low. TRADE #1 Less is best. Most people hold onto stuff for “someday.”
Shelves of books, trinkets and trash from trips, garage/basement/closets of stuff. You have to balance on the teeter-totter the stress of clutter to the value of use. Almost dying has really helped me to change my teeter-totter. The L i gh t n e ss o f Tra sh Ca ns
After all, none of the stuff I would be keeping goes in the box—just me and a suit. The rest of it is just stuff I left for my family to get rid of. TRADE #2 Cleaning should include killing. Most cleaning includes the
usual activities—sweeping, vacuuming, wiping down, cleaning surfaces in the bathroom—you know, that kind of stuff. I pay for that now. Look at the list and it makes sense why. Anyway, cleaning is an opportunity to throw stuff away. Clothes, shoes, boxes of stuff you ordered from Amazon, the packaging in the boxes of the stuff you ordered from Amazon that you kept so you could send it back. Kill it. Don’t keep anything around for another day. It is a great opportunity to clean your life every week. My son does the same thing with his car every time he buys a new one.
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