So one of our tasks for the upcoming holiday weekend is that MDH and I are planning to clean out some stuff we've had in storage since early in the year. We boxed up some clutter while our condo was on the market, and now it needs to come home so that we can save the $80/month we're currently paying to keep it somewhere else. A simple enough task, but I am dreading it as though it's a colonoscopy.
I'm not alone. Storage units are popping up everywhere, and more Americans than ever have so much stuff that we can't even manage to cram it inside our own houses. I'm all for capitalism, but how much stuff do you have to have that you can't even fit it in your house? That means that rather than selling, donating, or tossing our stuff when it is no longer useful (not to mention the horrifying option of buying less of it in the first place), we are renting spaces to store our stuff away from ourselves. And for the extra space, we're paying a premium (we're currently paying $8/month per square foot for storage -- that's 10 times what our mortgage & condo fees cost per square foot!)
As I write that, I'm almost embarrassed. I find myself gawking at my own inability to keep better organized, trim the fat, and lose the stuff. But I also know, deep down, that part of the problem isn't material or financial. It's emotional. I am renting a luxury space for my emotional baggage.
Every time I go to the storage unit, muttering about the ridiculousness of the whole scenario and wildly determined to turn over a new, simplified leaf -- I turn around and leave defeated. I walk out to my car with my tail between my legs and a tiny box of something in my hand that I'm committed to sorting through. Next week.
That's because when I look around my 10-foot-square penthouse, I see so many things I'm just not ready to handle. There are things I bought that are really unnecessary in life; and I'm too stubborn or embarrassed to admit that maybe I didn't need a glass cake dome after all (I never bake, but I love the idea of it). Or that my first softball glove - now rotting from the inside out so that it is almost crispy in texture - is finally destined to work its way to the bottom of a landfill and slowly rot back into the earth.
There are boxes of mementos my mother kept, most of them truly useless now and meaningful only to her. I have no place in my home to put these boxes, and for as long as I've had them, I've only opened them once. And yet, even though she died over six years ago, I find it hard to throw away something that Mom cared enough about to keep, box, and label. It feels almost like a betrayal to veto her decision - she thought this was important, she wanted my brother and me to have it, see it, understand it... and who am I to decide it should now go to the dumpster outside Public Storage? Maybe I'll start somewhere easier.
There's some play therapy stuff I got from another therapist, who was kind enough (and wise enough) to give it away when she no longer needed it. As a student, I gratefully snatched the opportunity to have some really great tools for free; knowing that one day I would have the space and opportunity to make use of them. Even though the possibility is somewhat slim that I'll make tremendous use of them in the next year, I worry that if I give them away myself (a) I'll regret it when the chance does come around to use them, (b) I'll feel guilty that I accepted a donation that could've gone to someone else and now am really acknowledging that I'm not using it, and (c) that if I try to pass them on, the original owner will hear about it and I'll be embarrassed. Hmm... that's complicated, too. There has to be something simple in here!
There's a doll bed made by my great-grandfather. It's sturdy and useful, and both my mother and I played with it when we were little girls. If I'm fortunate enough to have children of my own, I'd like to pass it on to them. But before I can really find a good spot for it at home, it desperately needs to be re-covered in fabric. It was stored in a relative's attic for years, where it developed stains I have no wish to identify. Another item on the "Great Intentions" list that I'm planning to get to.... someday.
So, moving on - a huge box of unsorted photographs. That's a 3-weekend project, easy. Double that if you include all the time I'll spend reminiscing as I try to sort through them and remember names, dates & places.... High school yearbooks, my letter jacket, notes from old friends and boyfriends; gifts and cards from people I loved but who, because of death or distance, are no longer around to hear me say it. How do you say goodbye to such things? How do you acknowledge that the space in your life is getting smaller for those memories, for those people -- and does that also mean that the space in your heart for them is shrinking as well? What will be left to speak for those years of my life - which I already have trouble remembering?
As I stand in the tiny spot in the middle of all this and look around, I feel overwhelmed, sad, and a little dumbfounded. Where do I start? I glance around quickly and opt for the cake dome - I think if I work hard and use a stepladder, I can squeeze it on the top shelf of the linen closet, right next to Mom's huge old punch bowl (which I've used a grand total of ONCE). So one box is taken care of, and the decisions on everything else delayed to another day.
I have to say, driving away, the $80 a month is starting to sound like a bargain.
No comments:
Post a Comment