clutter

I’ve decided to go through my house and really and truly sort through old things and get rid of them, spruce the place up, and clean everything really well. I want to upgrade our furniture. But most importantly—and most scarily—I want to make the hard decisions about whether to keep or toss memorabilia and stuff with emotional meaning.

And books. I’m gonna toss books.

This desire has required me to see our house in a new light. I’m visualizing how it would look different than it is. And this is an interesting process, because I’m feeling quite a bit of anxiety, even though I’ve barely gotten started.

I know the physical space that I live in is important. I’ve come to realize that I’ve been lowkey stressed in my own home because I look around and see things to do everywhere, albeit unconsciously.

I’m imagining that you’re the same way. Something little in my house might bother me, but if it isn’t taken care of, after a while it just stays there and never gets taken care of. I just get used to it. But it never really goes away.

We’ve been in our house for fifteen years, and with two kids and plenty of room, stuff piles up. We regularly go through clothes and other items and make trips to the Goodwill. But it’s time for something more drastic.

It’s taking me some effort to look at my home with a critical eye. I’m looking at “what is” and brainstorming/dreaming about how it can be better. More comfortable, functional, fun, and meaningful.

Studying my TV room, I notice that it needs new paint, and the photos on the wall are fading, and it’s kind of a mess of wires and blu ray packaging. Our couch is ancient, and the chairs are castoffs from someone else. The whole room is not very pretty and while its very beat up-ness has been the reason why it’s comfortable and we hang out in there a lot, I think we can do better. I long for a matching couch and chairs. And—gasp—a coffee table.

Our kitchen table is a bizarre freak—a mismatched tabletop and bottom—and several of the chairs are broken. One of them is broken at the top, and whoever sits there gets their hair tangled up in the part that’s split. So, this has to go.

And so on throughout the house.

How did we get here?

Quite basically, a slow accumulation of stuff.

We’ve generally accepted hand me downs from family, although we have bought some furniture as functioning adults. We’re in a weird situation with a 100+ year old house and a barn, because it came with a lot of stuff, including furniture in the rafters. We joke about going shopping in the barn, because after 100 years, there’s a lot of interesting antiques in there.

We’ve added to it, too. A habit we have is if something doesn’t work in the house, but we don’t want to get rid of it, we take things out of the house and put them in the barn. But this sort of shuffles around the problem and doesn’t lighten the psychic load.

Because there is a psychic load to stuff. I’m feeling it these days.

I’m really feeling it in relation to my books. As a writer and avid reader, buying books has been a form of therapy for me for a long time. While I do read a ton, I have many more books that I haven’t read, both in hardcopy and ebook. I’m scared to count.

Lately, I’ve been daydreaming about having a library—a room totally devoted to books. But since there’s really no space for that in my current house and we have no plans to build one (nor do I really want to build one, honestly), I’ve decided to go through the books. And edit.

(This is the part that scares me.)

Because what if there’s something magical in the book I just tossed that I need to know? What if I get rid of the one book that will change my life, but I’ll never know because I haven’t read it? What if the book I toss is some first edition worth a lot of money? What if I trash it and then buy it again? (I’ve actually done that before—got rid of a book in a purging session and then later regretted it and bought it again.)

These thoughts have caused me a whirlwind of emotions, even though I haven’t even started tossing things yet.

Guilt for all the money I’ve spent (wasted?) on buying things I’ve not read and honestly am never going to read. Stress for seeing piles of books that I “should” read. Stress for seeing piles of books that I want to read and don’t have enough time. And yes, joy, at seeing the books that have become old friends that I’ve forgotten about.

Overall, a basic anxiety, and I’m not even sure I can identify why that is. I feel a little foolish, but this is my space to be honest.

Still, even though I’m scared, I’m going to sort my books.

I think this time, though, I’m going to go through books more slowly. When I’ve gone through and sorted books before, it’s been fairly obvious what I want to toss and what I want to keep—generally tossing books in which I have absolutely no interest or have duplicates and keeping everything else.

Now, I want to tackle this task a bit differently. I really do want to go through each book Marie Kondo-style and pick it up. Touch it. Figure out intuitively if it’s something I want to keep (makes me happy) or if it’s something I can donate to the library. (That’s my current plan—to donate to the local library for their “friends of the library sale.”)

I’m scared of what is going to happen.

Is it strange that I’m very much feeling like I’m facing my fears? This, to me, is the same as standing up in front of a huge audience and giving a speech. This is the same as delivering bad news to a client. This is the same as getting on a rollercoaster.

I’m freaked.

I’m still going to do it, but I’m freaked.

What I think is going on is that I’m freaked that by tossing out things, I’m tossing out part of my life. Of course, this isn’t the goal—the goal is to keep the ones I actually love and let myself live better with less stuff.

But I’m writing these ideas down not only to process them, but also to see if someone out there connects with this. If you’ve felt weighed down by stuff but simultaneously scared to toss what is weighing you down. Did you go through with it? How do you feel now?

As for me, I can’t wait to find out what happens.