The clutter has kind of eaten me alive lately but it was good. I got the boxes of baby clothes out to their intended recipients in plenty of time for babies to wear them, I’ve gotten some larger baby doodads (prohibitively expensive to ship – like, more than the cost of a new one) to the consignment shop, and am currently going through clothing and linens to donate for the church rummage sale (so what if I am a C&E kinda gal, I can still donate, yes?)
I came to another realization today, and it actually utilized some of the Seven Habits training I went through at a previous job, which was sort of scary. I seriously have had “Scarcity mentality” about a lot of this stuff. I finally used up a bottle of dish detergent this evening and went into the cabinet under the sink to get another one. I seriously have like ten different bottles of dish detergent under there. Srsly. I am pretty sure people without clutter problems do not stockpile ten dish detergents at a time. And that’s not even counting the dishwasher soap! So I think something I should do as I go through things is to start writing all these similar items down on rosters, taped inside the cabinet or whatever where they generally tend to live. And cross them up as they are given/used/etc. So that I can glance at the list when going shopping and realize “Oh HELL no, I have like twelve of that already, I definitely don’t need more!”. My BFF does this with the things in her deep freezer and fridge. She has dry erase boards on each and keeps track of exactly what is in there instead of going *freezer diving for surprise dinner* like I do.
Bit by bit, I am trying to wrap my OCD packrat brain around the way that normal people live. For Bob’s sake, if I run out of dish detergent, I can GO TO THE STORE AND GET MORE. There will be more. It might not be ZOMG ON SALE like the stuff I tend to stockpile, but it also won’t sit under the counter losing its efficacy while it dreams of being the Chosen One and getting used.
I have also decided that it is far more important to get the one item that I really really want, love, need and will use instead of several different “well, this should be close enough” things that are on sale. The Fluevogs really opened my eyes to this concept. I pretty much had a heart attack at the price of them, but they’re really only about as much as I would spend on two pairs of shoes normally, give or take. Two pairs of shoes like the several which have taken up permanent residence in my closet as they don’t feel good to walk around in but that I kept anyway because they were “close enough”. Horseshoes and Hand Grenades indeed. When my mom was my age (or a little younger, I guess), she spent a LOT per item of clothing, because it was mostly made in this country, good quality, and not made in bulk. She had far fewer clothes but they all fit because she had to choose carefully, and couldn’t afford more than a few items per season/year/whatever. She now goes nuts at Goodwill and has closets full of “close enough” items. I am heartsick at all the brand new things, still with tags on, that I find, having squirreled them away when I buy them at “end of season” clearance prices at Target or wherever, but that don’t *really* fit or flatter, and that I feel guilty about because of their addition to the clutter and the expense of buying them, regardless how “cheap” they were.
Honestly, I know this stuff must be so obvious to most people that they would be pointing and laughing, but typing it out is helping to reinforce the idea that I don’t need to get all these things, that there will always be more, and that quality over quantity is a mantra to live by.
I watched a program on WWII last night on PBS and a woman was talking about their house in Levittown and how thrilling it was to own a washing machine for the first time. How frakking much do I take for granted?! How many people would look at the clutter, shake their heads, and cluck “this could have been your sunroom addition if you’d only have saved the money and not spent it on all this stuff you don’t need”.
I think along with the weight loss this year, I need to take some cues from my fiscally responsible friends and weigh spending decisions much more carefully. I need to stop shopping at limited-quantity places like TJ Maxx and eBay because it always makes me feel like I can’t “think about it” because they only have one or two and it would be gone. So? On the occasions I have actually made myself “think about it”, there have only been one or two times I actually regretted it later or even, in fact, remembered what I was supposed to be “thinking about” in the first place.
Also? I wish I had taken an economics or personal finance class in high school or college. I had absolutely no concept of the value of money when I got married, and I still struggle with it. My dad lived through the depression, my mom through WWII, and both of them kinda spoiled us as kids with all the things they weren’t able to have when they were little. I am trying very hard not to do that with the Squidlets. They have more fun with the cardboard cones from yarn than they have with the purchased things we’ve been given, most of the time.
I need to shut up and finish the dishes.
I LOVE YOU GUYS!
-Squidge
ps. I also went to water aerobics tonight and last night I walked Lucy Fur the world’s most codependent Border Collie (LFTWMCBC) with my mom. Exercise! Yay!
Julia O'C said,
May 1, 2009 @ 6:16 am
This is an awesome post! I wish I knew you IRL so we could talk about it. This post really, really hit home with me, and it’s something I’ve been working on very hard over the past few months. The areas that I’ve cleared out feel so peaceful to me now.
Good luck! It’s been fun reading about all of the changes you’re making.
Gretel said,
May 1, 2009 @ 7:42 am
It’s been so great to read about your evolution here! I’ve been reading with interest about walking, decluttering, and the general squidlet fun. I’ll say again, I wish we lived closer so we could have more time together. We may be up for a road trip this summer, if you wouldn’t mind us coming to visit (we’ll stay in a hotel, of course
).
Vicky "Iggystar" Bagley said,
May 1, 2009 @ 7:46 am
I could save myself time and cut/paste this entire post to my own blog. What I’ll do is gain control over spending in one area, say books…I had to stockpile books, especially from the used library sale because who can pass by a book for a buck?! Then I realized that I had many more books than I could ever read, stopped buying and was good…until I needed yarn for a project. Then, I saw some yarn on sale and of course I “needed” to get it because it was such a bargain. Then…well I need different colors of the same yarn because it’s so soft….and the cycle begin’s again.
Sales are a ratpack’s worst enemy! And changing a habit is a process…one I know first hand.
squidwidget said,
May 1, 2009 @ 11:20 am
G: Absolutely! We miss you guys.
V: I hear you – those yarn sales, they are insidious. Because not only is there the expense, the yarn is also bulkier than just about anything else. Grr.
Vismajor said,
May 1, 2009 @ 11:51 am
I really enjoyed this post; there’s a lot for me to take away from it. Also, have I told you lately how superb you are?
Tosha Newark said,
May 1, 2009 @ 12:37 pm
This post just goes to show how clued up and smart and funny and wise and kind you are. You deserve those shoes and you will get many many years of joy out of them and then you will give them to me ha ha.
we love you too,
x
squidwidget said,
May 1, 2009 @ 8:30 pm
Tosha, your feet would have to grow for them to fit, I think…
Vismajor: It was sort of a watershed moment for me, as I sat there staring at the battle formation of little dish detergent soldiers under my sink. I think the more I try to wrap my head around the way tidy people live, the more I will think that way naturally. I hope. I stopped myself from buying a few things today by thinking about dish detergent.
helen said,
May 4, 2009 @ 3:14 pm
my grandmother lives alone. She has three fridges and two (or is it four?) freezers. This is not normal behaviour in Scotland.
Now, we will allow her some grace on the freezers: these days she is very unsteady on her feet and can only walk to the highstreet once a week with her little trolley and return with some shopping. A neighbour gets most of the rest for her. Equally, she is too dotty to trust herself with a cooker or oven (for fear of forgetting about it and setting fire to things) so she does everything by microwave nowadays. If she forgets, tea just gets cold. Whilst sometimes she’ll poach a little fish in milk or make a sort of stew, mostly she eats supermarket ready-meals or left overs/Granny portions from our house (my dad sends stuff her way often now). So she needs a lot of freezer space to store her main type of food stuff.
On the other hand, she has an entire fridge devoted to WATER. Once upon a time there was a story about an impending water shortage…my granny used to live in Bath (south west of England) where in the OLDENDAYS water shortages could be a real threat. She now lives in Scotland (rain!) by the sea(water!) and in the sunniest town in Scotland….if there are ever any water issues in our home town they’ll have solar stills out in no time. Water shortages are not the sort of things a nearly 93 year old in Scotland ought to worry about.
Just to add to that….she didn’t want to buy bottled water when she stock piled- the Blitz Instinct was that this would be wasteful- so she refilled old bottles. This meant that until we made her throw it out, one of the bottles of ‘water’ in her fridge was a refilled extra thick bleach bottle…..I kid you not.
————————————
Yay for decluttering and re-evaluating needs. We are nearly at the point of attaching our new bookshelves to the wall in the living room, un-packing the books (only been here 11 months!!!) and dealing with the spare room/guest room/my study/room of sh*te as it is most commonly know. I must deal with my hoarding tendencies then. Wish me luck- I shall be using you as inspiration and strength!
Dawn said,
May 12, 2009 @ 9:35 am
I’ll find myself stockpiling things accidentally. We’ll start running out of toothpaste so I’ll make a mental note to get toothpaste next time I go to the grocery store. And sure enough, next time I’m at the grocery store I’ll get some. But then the next time I’m at the store I’ll forget I got some on the last trip and I’ll buy another tube. And then I’ll do the same thing 3 or 4 more times, until I see that we’ve got a giant pile of toothpaste tubes. Whoops. I’m not sure why I do this, I’m way too young to have Alzheimer’s and it doesn’t run in my family anyway. It’s like my brain RAM is flakey.
StarGrrl said,
May 27, 2009 @ 11:23 pm
You are 10billiongajillionpanolinpuppyfrito awesome, and I am so proud of the amount of stuff you’ve gotten through that I can hardly contain it. I am so happy for you with all the changes you’ve made, and the fact that even when you look at what you have left, you still trudge forward and dig in and DO IT!
You are my own personal Rosie the Riveter.
I love you hard, like Chinese algebra.