The first move in my life was to college on the opposite coast. Two suitcases went with me on the plane, and two boxes got shipped to my dorm. Added books and clothing for a season I'd never encountered before, and the two boxes grew to four. That's what came back with me four years later when I returned to my parents' home, to the room I'd grown up in. I stayed there a little too long, but that was partly because I was saving money for a couple of trips abroad. I survived two and a half months out of my backpack, in the old days when I had to carry actual books to entertain myself. I remember ruthlessly tearing out pages of Don Quixote as I read them, to reduce my pack weight.
The next real move was to the next state over, for graduate school. I rented a van, emptied my bedroom into it, and unloaded into a studio apartment on the other side. I added a queen-sized bed and more books to the five bookcases, dresser, desk, and bicycle I'd brought with me. I got a cat. That was all I needed for two and a half years until I moved to a grown-up, 1-bedroom apartment.
That move, across town, was made mostly with my car, a station wagon. A friend with a truck helped out, but I think that was only for one day's worth of hauling. The apartment is where the real trouble started. I god rid of the futon and acquired actual mattresses and bedframe. I got another cat. I bought an entertainment center thingy, a bookcase made with actual wood veneer instead of melamine, and solid wood end tables for which I scheduled, you know, delivery, for strong men to bring up the stairs.
Somewhere in here my mother tired of paying storage fees for the things she had inherited when my brother died, so I rented a truck and dragged too much stuff from her storage unit to here. The small oak table went in my dining area, and the broken (I convinced myself it was shabby chic) coffee table went into my living room, along with another coffee table abandoned by my parents. My brother's other things - including a lot of large and heavy furniture pieces - went into a storage unit. A moving friend gave me a chair and small sofa. Oh, and another friend made one of those carpeted climbing towers for my cats. That's the story of the Big Stuff.
Meanwhile, Small Stuff had entered my life, via antique stores and eBay. My brother had collected a small quantity of a particular kind of china (lusterware) that had come to me and that I liked. I decided I was a Collector of this and bought more. A lot more. I displayed a great deal of it - some of it in a china cabinet from the now defunct Bombay Company-and the rest went into boxes in my huge living room closet.
Through dumb luck, I had also somehow acquired a career and regular salary. The storage fees and eBay shipping didn't eat a really big hole in my budget, and I still had money left over, as they say. Not wanting to get in trouble for constantly checking eBay auctions at work, I bought a desktop computer for my home. The computer came with a money management program which entertained me greatly. I started tracking every penny I spent, and to my surprise realized that I was still saving a great deal. It only took a couple of years to save up for a down payment on a condo, which I bought in late 2001.
Buying "property" was (and is) a HUGE deal to me, because I grew up in an apartment. It was a stable environment - my parents lived there for 38 years - but I was acutely aware that 1) I did not want to one day enter my old age caught between a dwindling income and increasing, unending rent obligations and 2) there are some things you just can't do in an apartment, because it isn't yours.
When I moved to the condo, larger than my apartment, I decided it was a time of reckoning. I looked at the "Someday" items in storage, and decided that anything that wouldn't fit in the condo would have to go. I felt there were some things I would want If I Had a House Someday, but I knew that was just too far off. So I put on my big girl panties and gave away or sold some huge pieces of furniture that I couldn't fit into my life. I got rid of the storage unit. I liked the feeling of space in the condo and didn't add a lot of big new Stuff. I did ditch the chair and couch for a nicer chair and couch. Eventually I traded the shabby dining area table for a nicer one with chairs that matched. The main added mass came from some large speakers (of my brother's, that had been in storage) and a tansu that had also been in storage, and I bought a futon and frame for the spare room upstairs. I also purchased some exercise equipment which I of course did not use and gave away a couple of years later. I didn't really buy much more lusterware. In fact, I started selling some of it.
All in all, it easily passed for "cozy."
There was enough room here for another person, handy when another brother came to live with me for a couple of years. It felt a little crowded, but doable. Then he left, and I felt like a had so much space again. When my grandmother went into a nursing home, I rented a truck and rescued a bookcase, a linen chest, the deco toaster I had always wanted, some mixing bowls, and, well, some other Stuff. Still tolerable, until my mother died. I couldn't let my father be alone so far away, so moved him to a rental house here. That meant packing up my childhood home, getting rid of some things, but moving most of them here. My father had only lived here two and a half months when he died, just four months after my mother. I was a wreck, of course. I still got rid of some things right away - I called the good people of 1-800-GOT-JUNK to take away the queen-sized bed, the 1970s dresser, the end tables, the pressed wood bookcase, the dining room table. Mom's bookcase (and books) and cedar chest came to live in the condo, and everything else went into storage - the opium bed, the side cabinet, the Windsor chairs, another tansu, a desk, and thirty-five years' worth of model railroading material and supplies.
No problem sez I, I'm grieving, it's OK to have a small storage unit for a while, until I can deal with it. I can afford it.
Only a few weeks later, the Kidlet, my foster daughter, came into my life. That's a story for another day. I tucked her into the upstairs room and that was fine. I was happy to have someone to take care of that had, unlike my parents, the potential for a happy outcome. When she moved out a year and a half later, we shipped a few boxes, and packed everything else into her VW Beetle and drove it to the other coast. Fine, until her mother spiraled out of control and Kidlet came back to town in a last ditch attempt to rescue her mother and her mother's Stuff. A lot of this Stuff represented happy times from Kidlet's childhood that she wanted to keep - so I got a bigger storage unit. I also got one of Kidlet's mother's cats. Kidlet went back to her side of the country and Kidlet's mother went on to bounce from rehab to street to strangers to I don't know where.
Here I am today, moving again. I bought Dream House and it is filling up with Stuff that I Do Not Want, and Stuff that I Probably Maybe Do Not Want. Some Stuff I know how to get rid of, and some I don't. There is nothing like moving to make a person excruciatingly aware of just how much Stuff she has. In my case, it doesn't help that 1) the move involves stairs and 2) I am packing and moving nearly everything myself.
The sensation of too much Stuff is compounded by that fact that, logically, it made sense for me to clear out my storage unit first, so as not to pay any more storage costs now that I have a House. That means I have already put a good deal of effort and time into "moving," but my condo still seems full, because that's not what I've been working on.
The House is filling up fast. As I unload box after box of gazingus*, I can't help but think of the hoarding shows I love so much. Now, I am not a hoarder. I'm probably not even a proto-hoarder. There are no goat-paths here. I've incurred no financial peril. The Health Department would find nothing to cite. I've just accumulated a little too much along the way, and don't want to go any further on this path, because my possessions do weigh on me, mentally and emotionally. Realistically, I am unlikely to move from the town in which I currently live. I like it here, and I have a decent job, a job that is a secure as one is likely to be in this day and age. I just hate the feeling that I couldn't easily pack up and leave if I wanted to.
This blog is to account, in detail, the process of dealing with this Stuff.
*
Gazingus pin is a term from the excellent book
Your Money or Your Life - which I own and need to re-read - used to describe that thing you collect and will never pass up an opportunity to acquire - vintage buttons, power tools, unicorn statues, books, B-movie DVDs, whatever. For myself, I use it to describe all items I buy but clearly do not need, from impractical shoes to froofy coffee drinks. I use it as an actual category in my financial tracking, so I can separate necessary expenses from obviously unnecessary ones.
