Too Much Stuff

We are preparing for a house renovation to make our first floor more livable for just me and my husband in our new empty nest lives. We're bringing our bedroom downstairs, the laundry room upstairs, and converting a small room into a bathroom with a walk-in shower. The goal is for us to be able to stay where we are as we age and stairs become problematic, and we're doing the work early while it's easier and we can afford to.

The kids' rooms upstairs will stay as they are for a few more years as people come and go from college, and our bedroom will become a guest room. That whole second floor needs some work too, but that won't be for a while.

We're also improving our first floor powder room, and having a simple tool room space put together in the basement where I use my bandsaw so I can have better lighting and a less spooky experience down there when I need to cut something out.

We've chosen fixtures and drawer pulls and cabinet stain. Windows have been ordered. While whole areas are being gutted, new wiring is going to happen that will put light switches in more reasonable places. Plans have been drawn up and tweaked and tweaked again. We await permit approvals. We've picked out some cool tiles. 

  

It won't look like much of a change from our kids' point of view (which is good since they tend to not like change), because neither of the converted rooms were places they ever used. Our new bedroom will be in the space that was my home shop, and the nook where the new bathroom will be was more of an inadequate guest space. The most notable change for them will be the butler's pantry--which we've used for years as a craft supplies space--will be gone.

This was the most beautiful and organized the craft area space ever looked back when I first put it together in 2010. We could actually open the table and work on projects there when the kids were very small. Now imagine that same space with an extra set of shelves filled to the brim on the right wall, and tubes and paper and boxes piled thigh deep on the entire floor. I don't think I was ever inspired to photograph the area at the height of the storage crisis. Now it is empty.

 Empty!

 

The tricky thing is not simply moving things out so work can be done, it's deciding where those objects will go since they can't go back. The craft area/butler's pantry will be fitted for laundry and a linen closet. The nook will be a bathroom, so none of that furniture would have a home. 

Which means we've been engaged in a ruthless level of clearing stuff out of our house. We have too much stuff.

That happens whenever there is so much going on that there isn't time to thoughtfully edit what's in our immediate environment. When there were kids at home, life was a constant shuffling of stuff. I'm not dealing with anything in the kids' rooms or closets--that's a project for when they have spaces of their own to move into later--but the renovation deadline gives Ian and me motivation for addressing boxes and piles and bags that have cluttered every corner for years.

Some of this sorting process has meant completing projects that have been put off too long. I've felt bad that Ian's army awards have collected dust on various shelves since he got them. I finally organized the medals and coins into frames, and put all the certificates and flags, etc., into a single storage box.

The rest of the army things we are still working on. Ian retired in 2020, and during Covid not only did he not get a decent sendoff, he didn't have a way to return his gear. It's been stashed wherever it would fit in various spots all over the house, so we recently consolidated the army things into a single pile. I have not missed how hard it is to contact anyone in the Army when you need to. Lots of messages, lots of voicemail menus to navigate, still no luck figuring out what they want back and where to take it. But it needs to be gone in the next few weeks, so cross your fingers for us.

For a lot of things moving out of downstairs rooms, we've had to clear upstairs space for those things to go. The bulk of that has meant an honest clothing purge. That's been overdue for a long time, but it can be hard. Admitting outfits will likely never fit again is a bit of a defeat, but I'm realizing it's worse to see them in the closet and feel bad than to have them go to someone who can use them. I got rid of two large bags of clothes and can finally get everything in my dresser. I figure a few sentimental keepsakes are okay, but they now live in garment bags in the attic.

Most of what we give away I do through a local Facebook group called "Buy Nothing Bay View" which was started several years back to prevent things from ending up in landfills. Most of the time when I put up a post with a picture of something on my porch I want gone, it disappears within a matter of hours, sometimes minutes.

Among the sentimental items I chose to donate was a long coat my grandmother bought me back in college. She knew I mostly lived in t-shirts and jeans which went fine with my grungy winter jacket, but she wanted me to have something nice for when it was cold and I was dressed up. I loved this coat. I did wear it for a few years. It doesn't fit now. It doesn't make sense for a nice coat to hang in a closet when someone could be wearing it.

 

Same with Ian's suits. There is sentimental attachment to them because Ian's father died when Ian was only three, so my dad was the one who took him out suit shopping. My dad wore a suit and tie nearly every day, even at home. He once made a crack about how his tie was all that stood between him and barbarism. He loved a good suit. It meant a lot to Ian to have his help choosing some. We kept one for the attic, but passed the others along to a group that helps get veterans back on their feet.

Then there are the things that I really like, but have to admit I do not use. Like this vintage purse! It's so cute! I love it! I used it exactly once! That's stupid! I passed it along to someone who I hope takes it out on the town and maybe I will see it there.

Then there are things like these baskets: A very nice one that came with the house, and a sentimental play one. They are both now off with other people who I truly hope enjoy them. They were perfectly nice things to have around, but they weren't doing anything other than adding to the number of things in the house.

The biggest bonanza of the porch giveaways was the 3D glasses. I wanted exactly two pairs once for something I was doing back in the late 1900s, and my brother (maker of holograms and master of the 3D world) excitedly said he could help and mailed me HUNDREDS. I don't even know how many hundreds. I used the couple I needed for my project, and kept the rest forever in the above posted nice basket. I did save out a dozen or so (because you never know, and a few don't take up much space) but the rest were picked up off my porch by people a few at a time. Over the course of a week the pile got smaller and smaller until they were completely gone. 

We've given away a loveseat, bookcases, wires, art supplies, grout, sand toys, bikes, tools, broken violins, books, rugs, folders, buckets, boxes, lamps, a rice cooker, etc. etc. etc., and more still needs to go. It all seemed good to have on hand, but the truth is if we ever need any of those things, we can get more. There was more stress than peace of mind having those things in reserve at home.

Not that I needed a reminder that it is better for things to go to people who can use them rather than gather dust in our house, but I got one recently anyway. One of the things we gave away in the fall as we we emptied the basement was a red wagon. It was hard to see it go because the memories of pulling my kids around in it are so strong. But I decided those memories persist with or without the wagon in our house, and someone else could be making their own happy memories with it, so we posted it on the Buy Nothing site.

 

The person who picked it up messaged me a few weeks ago to say that she had gotten it for her sister's child to use. They had been talking about how much they wished they still had their childhood wagon, then mine appeared online, and they were so happy to have it. Her sister died recently from cancer, and she said it meant so much to be able to use that wagon before she passed.

 

Obviously not every donated item is going to provide such a profound experience, and I suspect many of the odds and ends that sat in my home unused will wind up unused somewhere else. But if I ever needed an illustration of why moving things along I don't need is worthwhile, that was certainly it.

 

A big struggle for me is not having objects to spark memories. I worried for a long time that if the thing left, it would be gone from my mind as well. I'm starting to realize it's okay to let some of it go. Plus I can take pictures. 

 

I think for creative people who like to make things, it's hard on some level to give up anything. Every scrap, every object, every doodad and bit and piece could be used to make something new. I never lack for ideas. I lack storage. 

 

In an ideal world I would sit in a giant workspace and make whatever came to mind and then have it leave. I would like to make tiny furniture and gigantic animals you can climb and weird things that light up and spin and instruments that don't make sense and doll houses with hand painted wallpaper and a million other things, but there is no room. Maybe if I ever retire I will make such things and then put them on the porch for someone to take, and then I will make the next thing. Right now there is other stuff I need to make and fix in order to afford what we actually need, so that odd plan has to wait.

 

In the meantime, I am delighting in making stuff go away. I used to be in a season of need. Now all I need is more empty space. It gives me room to think and dream and breathe. Empty space is bliss.

 

Mold-A-Rama Road Trip!

I come from a family of collectors.  I have most certainly passed that gene along to my children.  (My husband, poor man, is surrounded by other people's "precious" things, but at least we are unlikely to move again anytime in the foreseeable future, so he won't have to suffer lifting endless boxes of books and rocks.  Every time we've moved books he's paused to show me how light his library card is.)  There is something satisfying about filling in gaps in a collection, and something oddly comforting about seeing evidence of experiences you've had all lined up on a shelf.

Mold-A-Ramas across the mantle

Our Mold-A-Rama collection is the first one we've tried to do as a family and it's been incredibly fun.  Mold-A-Rama figures are not expensive, they're silly, they are just rare enough to be exciting, and best of all the pursuit of them has taken us to interesting places we otherwise would have never gone.

Which brings us to our trip to Florida.

When we first looked at the map of places one can find Mold-A-Ramas we essentially wrote off most of them as impossible.  We would collect what we could in the Midwest, and maybe eventually hit the one location out on the West Coast on a visit to relatives that direction, but anywhere in the South?  Why would we go there?

But then we began to think, why not go there? 

It sparked an idea.  An idea that led us to escape the brutal Wisconsin winter for a couple of weeks and enjoy some wonderful time together.  We weren't sure we could hit everything on our list, but we aimed to try, and we succeeded!  Two places were closed this time of year (Adventure Island in Tampa supposedly has one Mold-A-Rama machine, and some kind of Microcar Museum in Georgia we think has four), but everything else we knew of that was open we got to.  Our list included:

How do you hold onto something you cannot touch? (Babble)

Memory is fascinating.  When the topic comes up, most people think about how good they are at keeping track of details or how far back they can remember.  But memory is broader and deeper and more ethereal than that.

When my grandmother started showing signs of dementia, the way in which her memory defined her was both alarming and intriguing.  The rules of conversation had to be completely rewritten to accommodate her when we visited.  Relationships formed in recent decades went out of focus, but figures from the past loomed large.  The purpose of time spent with grandma had to be accepted in new ways because we would travel ten hours to visit with her knowing as soon as we left our efforts would be forgotten.  I hadn’t realized how much I considered visiting people in terms of ‘creating memories’ until that part of it left the equation.

Being with grandma toward the end was about being purely in the moment because the memory would be one sided at best.  In the case of someone like Mona, neither she nor my grandma would likely retain a memory of their time together, Mona being too young to remember and grandma being too old.  To watch any interaction between them was surreal knowing I would likely be the only person in the room to come away with any memory of that time at all.

I seem to have a pretty good memory, although I wish it were better.  One of my brothers doesn’t remember much from his childhood from before age 12, so when he wants to recall something from his past he asks me.  He declared me keeper of family memories at one point.  It’s a nice role, I just hope I do it justice.

But parenting has altered how I think about retaining memories.  I used to fear losing any memories about my past because it felt like part of me was disappearing.  I kept things simply because I had clear memories associated with them, whether those memories were worth holding onto or not.

That changed when I was pregnant the first time and was clearing space for the baby.  I didn’t care about the details of my past the same way.  My childhood was done.  I was excited about the new memories coming that would be about a new childhood.  Building memories for the baby mattered to me more than preserving my own past.  I was able to let many objects go.  I would look fondly at something, enjoy the memory that went with it accepting that it may be for the last time, and then give it up either to the trash or Goodwill.  Having children is more about looking forward than looking back most days, and I’m fine with that.  It’s almost a relief.

It has been stunning to observe how memory works in my children and what they experience.  I am constantly amazed by either something they remember or something they don’t.  Aden has an excellent memory for the objects in my parents’ house in Michigan, for instance, even though typically we only visit once a year.  She also has a very good memory for language and emotions.

Mona seems to have very strong tactile memories which help her when she’s building things, but labels don’t concern her.  She can never remember which room I mean when I say ‘the living room’ or ‘the dining room.’  She has no interest in remembering which of her twin uncles is which and uses their names interchangeably, even if only one of them is around and she’s been told which one it is.  But obscure moments from visits to the cottage she can describe in detail, or whole strings of dialogue from a show she likes that we haven’t seen in awhile will roll off her tongue with no problem.

Quinn learned the name and location of every country in Africa in three days at age two.  It was impressive, and then he was bored by it and forgot everything.  He’s gone through several different phases of learning something incredible and then just letting it go.  He recently rediscovered his love of sign language, and I can’t tell if he’s picking it up quickly because he remembers any of it from when he was a baby, or just because he picks things up quickly.

I think a lot about where the cutoff for some memories are.  I can tell you with certainty what I ate for lunch yesterday.  A week from now that will get sketchy, and at some point it will be gone.  I think about how that relates to what my children know.  All my kids have been to visit their grandmother in Portland, Oregon.  If you’d asked them on the day we returned to Milwaukee if they remembered any of it they would have of course said yes.  A week later that would have still been true.

But somewhere between now and then there was a day where it slipped away from them, and they no longer remember Portland.  Fall of 2008 was half of Quinn’s life ago, so he doesn’t know what I’m talking about when I refer to something we did on that trip.  Mona might remember it if we returned there, but can’t recall anything on her own at this point.  Aden, if you jog her memory a little, can remember quite a bit, mostly about a unicycle race in the mud we saw.  She can tell you a bit about her grandmother’s house, but those memories are not very stable.  I wonder about knowing something one day, and having that memory evaporate the next.  I think that’s how our memories of being babies vanish, one day at a time.

Today my grandma lives only in memory.  I feel her keenly, some days more than others, but I wonder how strong any of my kids’ memories of her will be over time.  Quinn does not remember her, and I don’t expect Mona to for much longer.  Aden clings to memories like precious objects the same way I tend to, so she will resist letting her great-grandmother go.  Photos will help, but photos can trick us into thinking we remember things that we don’t.

I have a feeling Aden may be the keeper of our little family’s memories in the long run.  She’s a sentimental pack rat who likes to bake and that’s a recipe for handing down family stories and traditions.  I wonder who I will be to her when I’m no longer here.  I trust Aden to edit me in a good light one day, but I think about that as I interact with her in the present sometimes.  I can’t know which of the things we do now will stick with any of my kids.  I can only hope they look back one day and see a lot of love and maybe a few really good cakes.

grandma and Mona at the cottage