Heart and Mind

Throwing Stuff Out... and Where are my Disgusting Hats?

This November, I will have been living in my house for ten years. That's really something when you consider that in my twenties, I once moved seven times in seven years. Looking back at that era, I don't consider myself a person who was someone who was particularly "on the go." Rather, I thought that I was pretty typical. It goes along with the territory of being young, getting your life going, moving around a lot. And then, if you want to and if you're lucky, you're able to settle down a bit. I bought my home when I was twenty-eight and, ten years later, I'm in the same place.

When you get a house and stop moving, something happens. You start accumulating stuff like never before. You have more places to put stuff, and less of a reason to get rid of it. And, although you do accumulate more nice stuff (furniture and electronics) and useful stuff (appliances and rakes), I'm not talking about those things here. Rather, I want to talk about the stuff you end up accumulating that you really should throw out. Especially when you start putting stuff into deep storage because you don't really need it, but you don't want to throw it out. When I put something, say, under my workbench in the basement, I stop and realize, "You know, this might actually still be sitting here, under the workbench, 30 years from now if I don't actively revisit my decision to not throw it out."

Well, the good news is that I am less of a pack-rat than I used to be. I still save stuff that I think will have value to me, but I'm much better these days about forcing myself to throw out things that I know honestly I'll never use. When I'm going through and cleaning storage areas, I don't always toss the stuff on the first round, but I'll store it until the next time I clean up. And I actively realize this. I say, "Well...I'll hold onto this for now, but I'll probably end up just storing it for six month and then throw it out." And I'm pretty good about that. The next six-month cleanup will have new items that I "should" throw out, so I move them into the garbage queue and get rid of the old ones from last time. It's kind of like your computer's Trash can ("Recycle Bin," for PC people). It's like temporary garbage that isn't quite brought out to the curb yet.

But I historically have held onto old sneakers and baseball hats and other well-worn garments under the guise that I will use them when I need to do dirty work: "Hey, I'll use these shoes for mowing the lawn, and this will be my hat for when I paint." That sort of thing actually makes much sense, and I do use lawn mowing shoes and dirty hats constantly for these jobs around the house. But the problem is, they start accumulating. How many pairs of old sneakers for mowing the lawn do I need? In truth, probably one.

For a while, I was getting a collection of this type of stuff, but I have made an effort to make sure I throw more of them out. And I know that I have been successful. You know how I know? Because this past weekend, while siding my house amidst a batch of poison ivy, I really wanted to wear one of my crappy old baseball hats to offer added protection. And you know what? I couldn't find one! See, usually it's been the opposite. When I've wanted a nice hat to wear publicly, I would have to dig through a pile of disgusting, beat-up ones that I had ear-marked for dirty work. This time around though, while looking for a slop hat, I only found 3 hats, and they were all ones that I'd prefer not to wear when doing construction. Gunk from gutters overhead falling on me, poison ivy vines wrapping around my head, table saw wood chips flying everywhere, and a nice mix of sweat and dirt forming around the temples—I don't really want to wear one of my gamers for that kind of stuff, right?

I think we all hold onto things that we don't need to a certain degree, but people who clinically are hoarders with a real illness exist out there. And while some of them hold onto stuff for sentimental reasons or other purposes, sometimes they just operate under the notion that "I might need this someday." I think it's kind of interesting that the situation with my missing work hats would be the type of thing that might help someone with hoarder leanings to justify an otherwise irrational point of view. After all, if I hadn't been so darn diligent about throwing all those old hats out, I might have found one this weekend.

posted by Steve @ 10:16 AM