Our Shame

So here it is: our stuff won't fit in a 26 foot truck.

In fact, it wouldn't fit in a 26 foot truck, a completely packed pickup truck bed, and a large trailer loaded Beverly Hillbillies-style. Nope. After all that, we still had to rent an additional U-Haul truck, a 15 footer, to empty the Tonica house of all our belongings.

Frankly, it was embarrassing. We had close to thirty people helping us pack, and, while that made a lot of work go very quickly, it also means that a third of our ward was witness to our shame - we have too much stuff. I could see people looking at the truck and talking in hushed tones. I know they were saying, "There's no way they're going to get all of these things on that truck." and "I just can't believe they have this many plastic tubs. How long have they lived in this house?" Eeeesh.

It's not like we're hoarders. We don't have feral cats living in our house. I don't have a room full of empty milk cartons and Christmas lights. We've never needed a snow shovel to carve a path in the stacks of newspapers from the door to the kitchen. All of you who have been to our house know that it was clean, orderly, open, and neat.

No, the problem is not that we can't control our belongings. The problem is that we had a very spacious house. Again, most of you know that it wasn't some ridiculous, look-at-me-look-at-me McMansion. It was just a roomy ranch with sizeable bedrooms and closets and a cavernous basement with all the storage space you could shake a stick at. This is the thing I have learned from this experience: unless you consciously choose to do otherwise, you will generally fill up however much space you have. If you have a little, you'll fill it. If you have a lot, you will fill it too. We had a lot of space and so, over the last four and a half years, we have slowly but surely filled up the space we had.

It's all well and good when it's in orderly, labeled stacks in the basement, but when it's spread out on my lawn and driveway as though my house drank Tijuana tap water, it becomes clear that it's a problem.

We are moving again within a year. We are renting a small (!) three bedroom house for 9-12 months until we find something more permanent that we want to buy. Consequently, we will not be opening or unpacking most of these boxes. They'll go straight the basement and stay there until it's time to move them to another house. More than that though, I want to downsize what we have. Suzy and I both made stabs at getting rid of excess during the packing process. While I got rid of a box or two worth of things, the last couple of days has made me rethink what kinds of stuff is really important to keep. The question is no longer, "Do I like this object?" The questions now are, "Do I like this object enough to haul it up steps, into a truck, out of the truck, and down some other steps? Is it really important enough that it's worth hanging onto? Would I miss it in two weeks or two months or a year if I just got rid of it today?"

I'm even reconsidering my devotion to physical copies of books. Now you know I loves me a good, solid book in my hand. However, it occurs to me that after I read a book, I put it on the shelf and it sits there. Rarely do I actually go back to it and reread it or check it for information. Most books I read once and then it sits on my shelf like a trophy, like the head of a gazelle after a safari. I think most of my books sit on my shelf as a kind of sign to visitors saying, "Why, yes, I AM an English major! Read a lot? Do I ever! Smarter than you? Oh, I wouldn't say that..." You know what I mean? Why do I need shelf after shelf of books? For the most part, I don't.

So, I don't know what we'll actually do in terms of downsizing over the next year, but I do know this: my goal is to not buy another physical book, DVD, or CD for at least the year we are in the rental. I will not add anything new to my stacks of stuff this year.

The CD thing is covered. I don't think I've actually bought a CD since 2011 or something - and that was just because the physical album was cheaper than the digital version on itunes. (Eddie Vedder's Ukulele Songs, if you must know.) So that won't be a big deal, but I will also get rid of the giant, heavy tub of old CDs that I have already burned to itunes long ago. Why am I still carrying them around? Insurance? Just in case the INTERNET crashes and itunes disappears? Whatever. If the zombie apocalypse comes, having a hard copy of Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend album will probably be the least of my worries.

Books? Easy. Library or Kindle. As much as I love them, I don't need the physical object of a book in order to enjoy them. Or if I really want to hold the book itself as a I read and not just the Kindle, why do I need to own the thing and carry it around with me ever after? Why not just check it out from the library and turn it back when I'm done? There is no need for me to buy a brick of paper just so it can sit on a shelf.

What's more, I'm going to go through the books I have and really evaluate whether not I need to keep them. I have a copy of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game that was a gift from the excellent Clark Draney when I left Twin Falls. That stays. My copy of Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, a book that I pretty much forgot as soon as I was done reading it? Goodwill can have it. If I don't absolutely love it or need it, I am going to let it go and find another home.

It is time to pare down, my friends. Less is the new more.

It's late here. We are holed up in the Best Western in Midland, Michigan. Tomorrow I'll get up early and head over to the rental house and start moving stuff in. Whatever ward members are going to show up will do so around ten. Honestly, the thing I worry about now is what all these new people will think when they see the new family pulled up with three separate trucks at a house that's not much bigger than an IKEA model apartment. I have a feeling we are going to be the subject of stories both back in Illinois and here. Bleh.

Here's my new living space goal:

Maybe after Parker graduates high school.