Our Stuff, Ourselves: More on the Culture of Fridges.

So today I was into my third day of tackling a project that's been ongoing since last December: dealing with sorting items that were displaced to our indoor sunroom (main level) when we had to clear them from our attic to prepare for re-insulation.

Talk about exchanging the solution of one problem for a florid new one. A new problem which feels uncannily like plumbing the recesses of your mind, to look squarely at the very things you try not to think about. It is a psychological clean out, if you will, of my family's relationship to our things. So here is my screed on "stuff" (I warned you. You may want to sit down with a cup of tea to read this one, it's long).

In another post, I mentioned reading an article which led me to a book which has now led me to a three part mini series on YouTube related to the book and the "mass abundance of the middle class." Please watch it but make sure to catch your jaw as it drops. It was a moment of hard reckoning for me. Because I was afraid of the feeling that it was only too easy to slide down a slippery slope into the same kind of reckless overconsumption that was evidenced there.

Nothing like the show Hoarders, mind you, (which I think is a disgusting spectacle to distract us from the more common effects overconsumption has on our lives), but that's what hit home. These were just mothers like me who were trying to successfully juggle the myriad elements of their and their family's daily lives, but were becoming buried under to the point that they've sacrificed the right to a clean, orderly and peaceful home. That's exactly what the book Life at Home in the 21st Century examines. No one starts out wanting or intending to be a slave to stuff. So how does it happen?

From what I can glean from the videos, it's the cheap over-availability of material goods that is largely the culprit. Add to that an organizing culture that has sprung into action to be a band aid on the broken arm of hyper consumerism and you have this perfect storm of people who are slaves to their stuff. I was particularly heartened, validated and irritated by the statement that it's mostly mothers (or perhaps we should say the parent at home in charge of the management of stuff) whose cortisol spikes the most upon gazing at clutter. I think I can relate.

Among the things stored in the many clear plastic bins I had initially planned to neatly catalog each time we sent something upward for safe keeping, were baby items, maternity clothes, old yearbooks, papers, and other memorabilia. It didn't go as well as I planned. Life happened, and organization took a back seat.

How much time do you spend tidying, cleaning, organizing, managing, or otherwise "churning" your family's stuff? How much proportionally do you feel is manageable or even justified? Since when does being a stay at home parent entail this never ending wrestling with things?

Maybe that's why people don't seem to understand what it is we "homemakers" do all day. I offer you this assertion to think about: all the overwhelm is because management of a household in the 21st century is more now than it's ever been, because many of us haven't realized that stuff is the problem, not the solution. Some people head out to the mall just to escape their stuff. And they buy more stuff. How's that for irony? Oh yes, we have all the modern conveniences, which just frees up our time to either buy junk or spend a disproportionate amount of time wrestling with and containing it.

We over parent, over schedule, over buy and over organize all the over buying. We are in a hyper mode on all counts. Then cooking nutritious MEALS, which is more nourishing to our loved ones than any amount of material junk we could buy them, falls by the wayside and we use frozen convenience foods more often than we'd like, saving ourselves a mere (gulp) 12 minutes of time per meal.

These are anthropologists who studied these families! I think their methods and their findings are worth paying attention to. I am fascinated because learning about this book has allowed me to push off some of the guilt I have about how darn difficult it is to maintain a house to the standards that are comfortable for me. As the person in charge of the stuff, and a busy mom with busy kids, the buck stops with me, so I am facing the fact I always knew: it's hard because there's too much stuff. As the man in the video mentioned earlier says, there are no inbuilt intuitive mechanisms and rituals for letting go of what comes into our homes. The weekly garbage pickup isn't enough. We need to get as comfortable with releasing as we are with consuming. And once we've done that, we will be of clearer mind to consider carefully what we purchase and bring into our home.

Stored maternity clothes: "just in case" 

Remember how a carefully considered look at the reality of the typical life of the 1950's housewife made us realize that the whole extreme happy homemaker facade was a construct to keep women at home so the men returning from the war had jobs to come home to? Ironically, I think the American pastime of being "a collector" hit its heyday around this time. What on earth does that have to tell us?

I think spikes in the cultural push to over consume coincide with an at home work force that gets pressed down disproportionately. What kind of forehead slapping will we do in 30 years when someone surmises that all the stuff and subsequent organizing of stuff and the industries around containerizing (is that really a word?) and "professional organizers" was just another way to keep overwhelmed homemakers from realizing their potential? Women can't do a lot of things if they are in a self-imposed gerbil mill of organizing work (I won't even call it housework because it has gone far beyond that).

Our aspirational culture that is built around selling us goods has a lot to do with the simultaneous guilt that arises from overconsumption and its close cousin, chronic disorganization. It's a perfect storm to literally set us up in a situation where it's almost impossible to win. We go to a big box organizing store (you know the one) and see the closets set up with five dresses on display to send you the message you should get this closet and you will be more organized. No! You should have five dresses. THAT is the solution. Stop buying or even looking at those magazines in the grocery checkout that show you images of perfectly organized homes. You won't have one until you stop buying junk.

The famous ELFA closet. source: www.containerstore.com

Modern suburban houses are built bigger to accommodate all the things we own and we in turn feel every square inch must be filled to capacity in order to make all the space worth having. I love you, my sweet urban house from 1925 with hardly any closets and tiny rooms.

Some of these organizing experts make me really wonder. Maybe they have so much time to organize because they've made a business out of presenting us with neatly prepped and primped examples of what things should look like. Another reason I have gotten rid of magazines and catalogs - they just train us to set crazily unrealistic goals. Not to mention they encourage us to solve the problem of clutter by buying more containers to store it all in. I really like Alejandra's tips but I can't escape the nagging feeling that the operative word in the phrase "organizing stuff" is "stuff." I just don't have more time to spend printing out labels and organizing things to that degree. Do you?

The lines on this container top look like prison bars!

This web site brings me hope. I love Leo Babauta, he's an inspiration and a smart guy. It's time for us all to really think about what good all these things do us and how much we can realistically use or even deal with.

A major clean out will bring the stumbling blocks of guilt, re-assessment of how you've spent money, and nostalgia but those are the signs you are making progress. I have to remember this. You do too.

My house is not going to magically sprout more closets and even if it did, I'm not sure I'd want more space because inventorying the items from the attic makes me realize not only did I forget half of what was up there, most of it I haven't interacted with in years and would be happy to have gone from our lives. I don't need more closets or ways to organize...I need less stuff! Few things in my life have made me more attuned to the extreme value of time than being a parent.