The Stuff Project

Day 365: The Stuff Project

FIN!

Today, I'm getting rid of the stuff project, and my blog. I'll have time to knit dishcloths, and make purses out of neckties, and plant tomatoes. I'll have more time for yoga, and cooking, and keeping a journal. Most likely, the level of clutter in the house will gradually creep upwards. In two years, or ten years, or twelve, we may end up right back where we've started.

Or maybe not. I've learned a few things. Like about how merchandizing calls out to you and makes you want to buy stuff. And about how getting new stuff might be pleasing, but it doesn't really make you happy.

I've learned about how we measure a healthy economy in terms of stuff, and how so many objects are made with damaging environmental or social production practices, in the U.S. and abroad...making a healthy economy and a healthy environment incompatible.

The analogy that sticks with me the most from this year is the parallel between eating too much and buying too much. Junk food tastes so good when you eat it, but in the end, it's not very good for you. It makes you sick.

So I'm resolved to be awake. To spend my money on experiences instead of things. To spend good money on good things, instead of buying bargains. To appreciate what I have, so I won't want to reach for the next shiny object. To take care of what I have, so it will last a lifetime.

Now for a glass of champagne (or maybe a cold beer) and a warm bath.

Greeting Cards

Day 364: Greeting Cards

ONE!

The last box, cupboard or shelf I hadn't gone through - greeting cards. 

More Miscellany and a Clementine Box

Day 363: More Miscellany and a Clementine Box

TWO!

Miscellany

Day 362: Miscellany 

THREE!

Stencils

Day 361: Stencils

FOUR!

Ugly Blue Resume Stock from 1985

Day 360: Ugly Blue Resume Stock from 1985

FIVE!

My brother has suggested that starting next week, I could acquire one thing a day and blog about it, every day for a year. By the end of next year, I'll be back to where I was a year ago.

To get a jump on this idea, I've been to my parents house twice in the last two days.  There, I acquired six pink champagne flutes and four pink martini glasses to add to the two pink martini glasses they gave us when we married. Apparently, they offered us this set of glasses soon after we moved back to Ann Arbor. I remember their saying the first two glasses were part of a larger set. I have no recollection of refusing the rest, but they were being stored in a carton with my name on it.  My father is cleaning house.

I came away also with two tiny sherry glasses decorated with cut glass stars. I remember these from my childhood, as doll toys. My father got them in 1962, in Tokyo, when he was in the Navy. He also gave me a bottle of sherry, a bottle of port, several liquors and liqueurs and miscellaneous other beverages to put into the lovely glasses. 

From my mother, a nice sturdy needlepoint frame, imported from England, to replace the flimsy one I bought myself at Joann Fabrics and got rid of earlier this year. Also some leftover beautifully dyed soft wool yarn from my favorite needlepoint kit designer. 

Does this mean I need to extend the stuff project another day, or three?

Not. 

The reverse stuff project won't happen, but I am resolved to be vigilant - or at least thoughtful - about what I do bring into the housen the future. 

I like Sam's idea better.  I eat only whole foods for a year, while he eats only prepackaged foods. 

We'll see who feels better at the end.

Heat Diffuser

Day 359: Heat Diffuser

SIX

Last Bits of Plastic

Day 358: Last Bits of Plastic

SEVEN

Attic shelves completely clean and organized, not a moment too soon. 

Mystery Hardware

Day 357: Mystery Hardware

EIGHT

What is this thing anyway?

Packaging

Day 357: Packaging

NINE

Can't believe I am still finding such things on the shelves. 

Leaky Water Bottle

Day 356: Leaky Water Bottle

Let the countdown begin:

TEN

Insulation

Day 355: Insulation

Some things are so nasty, you don't get rid of them because you don't want to touch them. Such is this rolled insulation, which has been sitting on the floor of our garage alternately soaking up oily, salty water and drying out again since 2002. It has lost so much integrity it barely held together to be carted to the garbage can. 

I wish I had worn rubber gloves. 

Metal Fencing

Dat 354: Metal Fencing

I listened to Helen Macdonald speaking about H is for Hawk today, and T.H. White, and I thought about chickens, and bees, and raptors. I don't intend to have chickens again, not unless I have a friendly neighbor who wants to share them. Honeybees seemed like a more sensible pursuit - they only need to be monitored every week or three - but having a systemic allergy has crossed bees off my list.

The big thaw has cleared the path to more chicken stuff, including this metal fencing that we put along the top of the fence to keep the chickens from flying the coop. For a while, one of the hens was wandering, laying eggs all around the property and annoying the neighbors.

There is a Michigan Hawking Club. Who knew?

I'm not really dreaming of becoming a falconer. It's a lifestyle more than a hobby, perhaps even more than beekeeping. But I understand the appeal. Once trained, hawks don't need fences. Like bees, they are both tame and wild, domestic and free.

Everything seems like a metaphor these days.

Carpet Scrap and Foam

Day 353: Carpet Scrap and Foam

Love spring, hate managing water in an older house built over an underground spring. Spent the day chipping ice and pumping water from the driveway. And, the foyer to the studio is damp. Or perhaps "wet" would be the more accurate term. The studio - an old barn really - sits on a concrete pad, poured after the fact when the building was already over a hundred years old. Remind me, why did we think that putting carpet on the floor was a good idea?

Chipping ice with no coat or hat, sun shining in the sky, still feels like a jailbreak. I don't care what I'm doing, as long as I'm doing it outdoors.

Balls and Charger

Day 352: Balls and Charger


Today is the day you don't get in California, or Florida, or Costa Rica. It's the day the sun shines and the snow melts and the incessant sound of the furnace finally pauses. Today, robins sing and basements flood.

On this day, people take off their scarves and hats and full-length parkas and emerge. We put on our rubber boots and go outdoors.

When we pass each other on the sidewalk, we smile and say, "Nice day." When we slip on the ice, we don't mind so much, because things do get a little slippery before it all dries out and the crocuses come out. When we stop at the corner and wait for the light to change, we turn our pale faces to the sun, close our eyes and draw breath.

Today, we remember our Birkenstocks.

Today is a wang-dang-doodle, shindig jamboree.

It's wahoo, woot woot, weeyaw and hot-diggity dog.

It's yessir, you betcha, yes indeedy-do, yeppers, mm-hmm, true dat, yes ma'am.

It's get-out-of-jail-free day.

Today is hope, faith, charity and love, all rolled up in a ball of sunshine and a fresh breeze.

Today is spring.

Watercolors

Day 351: Watercolors

I'm at the Michigan Theater with Rich, waiting for The Second Rxotic Marigold

Hotel to begin. The organist is playing Let's Go Fly a Kite, very loudly. I'm full to the gills with Knight's  ginger and violet cocktail and an All-American Burger, but contemplating popcorn nevertheless. 

Life could be worse. 

Wickless Candle

Day 350: Wickless Candle

In the days after 9/11, so many writers, philosophers and leaders spoke and published their thoughts about the event. I remember being moved and impressed that anyone could process such a terrible and momentous event, and communicate about it movingly, cogently and quickly. I remember Ken Pfifer, our minister at the UU, gave a sermon that made me cry.

Perhaps I was in a crying state of mind.

I'm not one of those admirable people who can communicate quickly and cogently about a calamitous event. This last week I find I keep forgetting about the stuff project. It'll be seven o'clock at night and all of sudden, I'm saying to myself, I've got to find something to get rid of and write about it. I've got to do this for XXX number more days, and then I'll be free of the project. Today, the number is 15. Fifteen days.

If it wasn't such a hair's breadth to the end, I'd probably quit.

In fact, we are not in the middle of a calamitous event, but merely a difficult event. Even a painful one. Our family is at the starting point of a long and difficult path. There's nothing to say about it yet.

It's difficult to sit in front of the keyboard, self-reflecting, and to think about much else. Waiting, knowing nothing, worrying, planning and trying not to plan. This is the stuff of these next few days. No insight there. Only waiting.

Fierce Wooden Doll

Day 349: Fierce Wooden Doll
The metaphor for this toy is as subtle as Texas. There was once a rod that went through the middle section, holding the toy intact once assembled. At some point, the rod went missing. The toy has been no good ever since. I went to the trouble of scouring the toy shelves trying to find the missing backbone, but no luck. It's just gone.

What is the rod that holds me together? Is it my own inner strength? My husband and family? My yoga and meditation practice? My writing? My work? My mother?

My father?

I have a feeling I'm about to find out.

Address Book

Day 348: Address Book

Another casualty of the Information Age: address books. Where we once used the mighty pen to record information, we now use the cloud. Where we once used our brains to remember the phone numbers of our closest friends and family, we now use speed dial. Our brains we use to remember passwords. 

This little black book is documentary evidence of how transient we are. Less than ten years old, and so many of the names, addresses and telephone numbers out of date

This time, I completely forgot about photographing the object before I got ride of it. Guess I am distracted. 

Photo Printer Paper

Day 347: Photo Printer Paper

I had identified this printer paper as the target for today's blog before I knew my father would be diagnosed with esophageal cancer. This object, with its cheesy photograph of a smiling bride and groom, had me thinking about weddings and funerals and the passage of time before I even got the news.

My thought was that no one would print out their wedding photos on a home Epson printer. That was before I remembered that our three wedding photos were taken by my brother with a cheap point-and-shoot camera. Rich and I were married in the basement of the temporary City Hall in San Francisco, with only my brother and my friend Tina as witnesses. The real City Hall, with its gorgeous gold dome and soaring ceilings, was closed for repairs. We weren't eloping, we just didn't want a lot of fuss.

The basement was typical. Fluorescent lights, acoustic ceiling tiles and green linoleum tile floors. There was a sign on the wall above the registry that said "No Refunds." My brother took a photo of us making silly faces under the sign; I got very tired of looking at that photo in the years after. In my hands, I'm holding a mixed bunch that Tina picked up at a street vendor on her way to the basement. I remember the oriental lily smelled quite overpowering.

My mother once told me that 15 years is a short time. I remember it distinctly. We were sitting in the car on Huron Parkway, stopped at a red light. I must have been in high school. I don't know what I said, but I'm very certain I rolled my eyes and gave the classic hair toss. I remember thinking, "I will NEVER believe that 15 years is a short time." Fifteen years, I thought, represented one-fifth of a lifetime. Fifteen years, I thought, represented my entire life.

I know a lot has happened between and for me and Rich over the past twenty years. I know that during some periods, time seemed to flow like crystallized honey. But from where I sit right now, twenty years seems like nothing. Just a little over twenty years separate me, my brother and sister from our parents. That, and a short cross-town trip.

I'm counting my blessings right now. And praying for another twenty years to spend with my beloved father.

National Geographic Videos

Day 346: National Geographic Videos

To me, these videos are the screen-time equivalent of broccoli. Why would I watch National Geographic videos when dozens - nay, hundreds, of Star Trek videos await?

Why would I eat broccoli when the world is full of beets and cucumbers and acorn squash?

Don't get me wrong. I have a great fondness for National Geographic. I spent three days laying on a sofa in a rented room in the Hebrides 19 years ago, reading National Geographics from cover to cover in between dashes to the bathroom. All-day morning sickness.

Has anyone noticed how much better t.v. is than it was 19 years ago? And how much worse? The line between t.v. and movies is blurring, and in some cases, t.v. series play like a ten, twenty or thirty hour movie. The difference is the venue: at home in your Archie and Edith chairs, or at the theater with popcorn and a giant drink in your hand.

And at the theater, the audience seems to have lost track of the distinction as well. Is it my imagination, or do people talk and text their way through movies on the big screen just as they would at home alone?

Penguin, Pirate Ship, Construction Worker and Cowboy

Day 345: Penguin, Pirate Ship, Construction Worker and Cowboy

There's something old-fashioned, almost quaint, about these little plastic figures. I wonder if my father played with toys like these back in the 1940s. Maybe a few survived until he left for college in 1957, just as these few survived Sam's mock battles, barters and forays.

Granted, plastic (and all its environmental bads) isn't so old-fashioned. Just yesterday, I heard about a woman who attempted to give up plastic for Lent. Toothpaste, shampoo, toilet paper - she was able to live a fairly normal lifestyle except for a few staple items. I guarantee, though, that every mother would rather have toy soldiers made from plastic than from lead. Let the Doldrums be damned.

Today I'm not worrying about lead toys. We've decided to allow Sam to drive himself to Wixom tonight for two soccer games. Just under eight months with a driver's license. I hope and pray that he paid attention in driver's ed to those dire warnings about speed limits and merging.

Time moves inexorably forward. Kids grow up and leave home, parents get older. When the kids are little, you keep lead out of the toybox. You pull over when the babies unfasten their seat belts. You choose G movies and Teletubbies. You make sure they wear hats and mittens, warm coats and boots. You sing them to sleep, perhaps occasionally catching them under the covers with a flashlight. You watch their grades, feed them a home-cooked meal, and drive them to soccer games. It's a lot of work, and in some ways, it's the easy part.

Later, you let them drive themselves, a half hour on the freeway on a wintery Saturday night. You let them choose their college and their major. You give them unlimited screen time. You can't make them read, or eat right, or sleep the right number of hours. You can't make them do their homework, or walk the dog, or get to class on time. You don't choose their friends.

Next thing you know, they are stronger, faster, smarter than you. They see better, think better, reach farther. You're like Wile E. Coyote, chasing the roadrunner off a cliff, legs pumping for a just a moment before gravity takes over.

Free fall.

Egyptian Remains

Day 344: Egyptian Remains

I think it's fair to say that these Egyptian remains were more a process than a product. Emma Jane had some fun painting them when I brought them to her, a souvenir of a mom-alone trip to the Field Museum in Chicago. This was back during her mythology obsession days, when she read things like Greek Gods and Heroes for fun. Once the painting was done, she lost interest in the objects. I don't think I'd be hurting anyone's feelings if I got rid of them. 

Meanwhile, I'm off to Muncie to collect the real girl for spring break. (Did I say spring? It is -5 outside.)

Owner's Manuals

Day 343: Owner's Manuals

Cleaning and organizing the last attic shelves, I found very little to get rid of. Interestingly, I did find an actual missing shelf. Now that it's back where it belongs on the built-in, there is a bit more order to it all. 

Office Supply Trash

Day 342: Office Supply Trash

This stuff is trash masquerading as office supplies. These objects were together in a little pod of things that my next-door-neighbor Barbara left when she moved. You remember, back six or eight years ago, when I told Barbara that I would take anything she couldn't bring herself to get rid of. I promised either to use it, or get rid of it myself.

Barbara couldn't bring herself to get rid of these, and so I kept them, too. The mailing envelope is tattered and torn and would need lots of tape to make it usable. The tape, however, is not sticky.

I wonder if unwillingness to get rid of something is contagious.

Staplers

Day 340: Staplers
Think of all the resolutions a person could make to become happier and healthier. I've got several myself. A half-hour of yoga every day. At least seven strands of needlepoint a week. Forty-five minutes of aerobic exercise six days a week. Reading a minimum of three articles in The New York Times every day. Daily dog walks. Twice weekly dog brushing (that last one is new). And, of course, the stuff project.

I wonder, sometimes, if the structure and busyness of all these resolutions masks deeper things, like nail polish over grass-stained nails. I've adjusted quite nicely to Emma's being away. Will I miss her more when the stuff project is over?

I consider myself quite lazy. I never try to do my best. I only try to do the minimum. In my mind, this is strategic. Why do more than is necessary to accomplish the goal? This is why a doll boot or a few books or a broken WaterPik suffice. Or still more office supplies.

Office supplies. They are still coming out of the woodwork. Why do we have three of them? Strangely enough, all three work. I elected to keep the retro gray one. The other two went into the Gardens to become part of the office supply shelf.

Lazy or strategic, many days I would rather just go home and crash with a cup of hot tea and a steampunk romance.

Harpo's Hair

Day 339: Harpo's Hair

Before

After

Saved this in horizontal orientation
15 times but blogspot won't take it

The first time Harpo got a haircut, the groomer kept the clippings in a plastic grocery bag. She thought I might want to knit a sweater out of them. Not.

Since then, he has learned to hate haircuts. Hence the long delay, hence the pleasant little note. I actually bought one of those ridiculous fleece coats for him, thinking it might mitigate his embarrassment. Unfortunately, the medium was too small, and the large was too large.

Hoping the weather warms up son.

Misfit Toys

Day 338: Misfit Toys

Who remembers the Island of Misfit Toys? Those who do will know that the toys were all charming, and cute, and sweet, in a quirky kind of way.

A train with square wheels.

A wind-up mouse in a set of nesting dolls.

A train with square wheels.

A polka-dot elephant (how moderne!)

A pink fire truck, a blue bicycle, a blue car and a white rocking horse (perhaps it is discrimination on the basis of color?).

A bird that swims, a bear that flies, and an airplane that doesn't.

A cowboy who rides an ostrich.

A Charlie-in-the-Box.

The toys I am getting rid of today include:

A plastic figure with no head.

A plastic wig with no doll.

A black plastic combat boot, one inch log.

A grey plastic wheel with no vehicle.

Five dominos from three different sets.

A single pink popping bead.

An off-white plastic mystery thing.

Good luck finding loving homes, misfit toys.

Pollyanna and Other Books

Day 337: Pollyanna and Other Books

I scraped these last few books off an out-of-reach bookshelf like plaque from a molar, and moved another couple of good ones down where I can reach them. All the while, I'm asking myself, what's the point? I'm feeling again like John Krakauer almost at the summit, passing all the dead bodies and garbage, inviting myself to open the door to reason and drop this silliness now, while I still have something to read.

Not to mention wooden spoons to stir the soup, a few mementos of the kids' childhoods, and an antique or two.

Twenty-eight days to go, dead in the middle of one of the coldest snaps in recorded history, and isn't it ironic that the stuff project will end on the last day of winter? Between my two jobs and the $2.5M I'm trying to raise for a bicycle trail and strategic planning and a volunteer gig or two, I'm dreaming of the day when I don't have to come home from work, find something I don't need or want, and write about it.

I'm thinking, too, about how, if I'd spent a similar amount of time each day writing a novel, I'd probably have finished one by now. Of course, finishing a novel is no big accomplishment. I've already written two plus a children's book, and all three are stuffed in a RubberMaid bin in the basement, dusty, another few things I can't bring myself to get rid of.

My mystery novel was actually a damned good idea: Downsized to Death, about a young management consultant on a project (sound familiar?) and all the whacky characters she meets there. What could be a better idea for a series? Every four months, a new location, a new agency, a new murder. I've got a whole store of whacky characters and crazy stories from my consulting years.

Just last week, I was talking about a project at a county coroner's office where a corpse fell out the back of the coroner's van on the freeway during the project. Once, I got to see an animal control office stick a broom up a pit bull's butt. Another time, the undersheriff of one of the largest sheriff's departments in the country told me that the undersheriff is like the sheriff's underwear: he gets covered in shit while covering the sheriff's butt. I remember an elected official in a major county office excusing himself to go to the bathroom adjacent to his office during an audit interview; somehow he lit the bathroom garbage on fire so that after he came back, the room started to fill with smoke and the smoke alarm went off.

You can't make this stuff up. I even had a book agent who agreed to try to sell the book. Unfortunately, she thought the mystery I'd written came across more like the second book in the series, and wanted me to write the first book before she'd really begin shopping it around. I ran out of steam before the prequel was complete.

Well, if I'd spent time this year trying to sell my books rather than getting rid of stuff and writing about it, maybe I'd be published by now.

The trick is, though, that I wouldn't have. I might have made a resolution to do it, but in fact, I would have come home tired, or late, or preoccupied early on, and given myself permission to skip it. Then I would have skipped it again, and again, and within a month or two, I would've forgotten all about it.

Whether you have readers or not, if you make a resolution to publish a blog post every single day, and you don't, it's embarrassing. So I haven't published good stuff every day, but I've published. And I've gotten rid of something too.

Even if it was only Pollyanna.

Growler Bottle

Day 336: Growler Bottle

Why is wine hoity-toity and beer low-brow? I can discern many more nuances and flavors in beer. I can even tell a good beer from a bad beer when I taste it on its own, with nothing to compare it to. I have preferences. Michigan has over 100 microbreweries now, and, if it's not too patriotic, ours are among the best in the country.

A growler, though. That's a bit too large for one person to swallow. I guess that's why this refillable growler bottle from our favorite Ann Arbor micro-brewer has gotten dusty in the cupboard. Time to get my $5 deposit back.

Meanwhile, Sam and Rich are coming home from Florida tomorrow, so I've got one more night on my own. Would it be too decadent to have apple pie and Bell's White Winter Ale for dinner? Otherwise, I'll have to go out in the (very, very) cold to buy something healthier.

Mysterious Wooden Game

Day 335: Mysterious Wooden Game

In fifth grade, Sam designed a presidential election board game. The year was 2008 and Obama was running against John McCain. The game resembled Chutes and Ladders in that you rolled a die and sometimes randomly got to leap forward or get pushed back. If you landed on a trivia square, you drew a question card; if you answered correctly, you got another roll of the die. We made the question cards out of cut-up greeting cards and researched the elections on the web. There were questions about delegates and electoral votes, primaries and past presidents. We drew the game board on poster board, which I had laminated. Sam did this just for the hell of it, because he loved board games and played them almost every night. I daydreamed of his selling the game design to Hasbro or Mattel, but he wouldn't even take it to school to show it to Mrs. Pryce, his exuberantly kind and sensible fifth grade teacher. 

This is why it will be very difficult to get rid of most of the board games in the cupboard. Though we rarely play now - when we do, it's usually an electronic checkers board - each of the games in the cupboard is powerfully evocative of Sam. We've probably played every game at least 25 times, and some of them a hundred times or more. Most painfully, Clue, which requires three players and which Emma gamely (so to speak) played several times a week for a year. How many times can you work up an interest in Miss Scarlett and the dining room and the lead pipe? Also, Sorry!, which was fun in the beginning when it reminded us of Carol Burnett but got old pretty quick, and Aggravation, and Simpson's Monopoly, only slightly less stultifying than regular Monopoly. We still play backgammon with a real board sometimes. 

Sam is in Florida now, looking at colleges and thinking big thoughts. I'm keeping the games so I'll have them ready to play, when he comes home during the semester break, and later, just for a visit. I'm keeping the elections game to play with his boy some day, just like he's always saying. 

Bowl of Batteries

Day 334: Bowl of AA Batteries

Used to be, we put limits on screen time. Screen time included television, computers, videos, and video games. We didn't have smart phones back then. Half hour a day when the kids were really little. Around fourth or fifth grade, we upped it to an hour. 

I believe it was Emma's sophomore year in high school that we took away the screen time limits, thinking that they should have an opportunity to learn how to manage their time while they were still living at home with adult guidance. I thought about my friend Sarah, how she never had a t.v. in the house growing up, and had to go to the neighbors to watch Saturday Night Live or Dallas so she could keep up with the conversations at school. Once she grew up and got out on her own, she really, really liked to watch t.v.

Batteries are necessary for remote controls. Once we took away the screen time limits, all of a sudden, we began going through AA alkaline batteries. According to the EPA, batteries contain heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, and nickel, which contaminates the environment when batteries are improperly disposed of.

I am fortunate because I can take them to work, throw them in an eight gallon plastic bucket with a lot of other used batteries, and they will magically be properly disposed of. However, not much in alkaline batteries can be recycled. At one point, we did buy a charger and rechargable batteries. Much better for the environment, but somehow, that system broke down.

Middlemarch and Other Videos

Day 333: Middlemarch and Other Videos

To use Adrienne's term, after two days and many hours of non-stop strategic planning, my brain is applesauce. I'll not be blogging (much) today. 

Little Bag of Toys

Day 332: Little Bag of Toys

I remember being eight years old and imagining, really imagining, what it would be like to be 18 years old. I was standing in the laundry in our house on Frederick Drive. The door to the garage was open, and the garage light was off. I remember telling myself, "Someday, I will be 18 years old." I wasn't 100% sure I'd get there. The Cold War was on, and I thought the odds were pretty good that I'd get vaporized first.

Our lives, and what we do, and who we know, and what we own, are fleeting. These little toys have already bloomed and withered like spring ephemerals, while the kids grew up and grew interested in other things. This is a truth I prefer not to ponder.

Lately, many of my cohort have aging parents, ill or dying or already passed on. So I've been thinking and talking a lot lately about the detritus of a life, a full house of stuff that needs to be sorted and distributed, sold or thrown away or given away, and how for most people, stuff has a lot of symbolism and sentiment attached to it.

Sometimes siblings fight over what's left. As though the stuff will stand in somehow for the parent who's gone. Or perhaps the children never got enough - love or stuff or structure or recognition - and this is their last chance for sufficiency. Or perhaps the children are still competing with each other to the very end, still trying to even things out, still trying to be on top. But then, sometimes the siblings get through it just fine, dividing the goods with kindness or declining to take anything. Sometimes the deceased can't let go, leaving detailed instructions about who gets what.

Sometimes there are no instructions at all, and sorting it out takes years. There was a house across the street at Gros Cap, up in the U.P., that we watched fall into ruin while the siblings fought about who got what. Eventually the house disappeared altogether, like a reflection in a rippled pond.

We've got bits of stuff around our house, souvenirs of ancestors we don't know, or ancestors we did know. A chipped FiestaWare bowl and an old Shaker desk, a bone china cocoa set and a heavy crystal vase. Lonely single survivors of somebody's long and forgotten life.

Now I sometimes imagine what it will be like to be 80 years old.

I'm pretty sure that I'll take a neat, clean house for granted. I probably won't have a basket full of homemade ugly sock dolls or little plastic toys. I'll have more aches and pains. If I keep doing yoga, I may be able to keep up a pretty good walking pace. I'll most likely be an orphan by then, and I bet I dream vivid dreams about my parents. Some of my good friends will be dead. I'll watch more t.v. than I do now; I won't be working. I might not see very well, so I'll listen to books on tape. I might be a grandmother. I might have a small, walkable dog, or I might have a cat, or I might live in an assisted living facility that doesn't allow pets. I might be lonely.

Eighty is only 30 years away. I remember 30 years ago very well. Thirty years seems like nothing.

I'm not 100% sure I'll get there.

Toy Trash

Day 331: Toy Trash

Amazing. The basket of tiny toys I found yesterday, underneath the pinball machine and felt soccer field, yielded a jade disk that has been lost for years. Tina brought it back for me from a trip to Australia, and I wore it many times over many years before it went missing. I noticed it was gone, and then, some time later, I noticed it around Emma Jane's neck in her sixth grade picture. The leather thong is missing, but...yeeha! The stuff project is all worth it!

I sorted the basket into a number of piles. At the end, this was left. Things so broken or forlorn, I can't even package them in a Ziplock bag for a Kiwanis kid's grab bag. 

Broken Christmas Ornament, Dead Batteries, Plastic Man, Tiny Handmade Whip & Golf Ball

Day 330: Broken Christmas Ornament, Dead Batteries, Plastic Man, Tiny Handmade Whip & Golf Ball

Listing out all these little toys feels a little like intoning the names of the dead. Somebody conceived of these things, designed them, built a mold for them, harvested the natural resources from which they are constructed, hired staff to manufacture them, and then distributed them to retail establishments. Somebody - somebody I know - bought them.

Lately, they've been in a square shallow basket under a home-scale pinball machine alone with dozens of other forgotten toys. A godsend for a sentimental mother who was up in the attic, sorting through the basket of stuffed animals and rejecting the idea of getting rid of one of the six child-made ugly sock dolls. But no, I just can't bring myself to do it.

Thirty-five days to go and counting.

Winter Scarves

Day 329: Winter Scarves

I spent a good fifteen minutes staring at the bookshelves this morning. My dad suggested that I get rid of a book a day through the end of the stuff project, a scant 36 days from now.

But books flow into the house like water through a window screen. A single book isn't in the spirit of the stuff project; if I get rid of only one per day, I'll end up with a net gain. My rule has been to get rid of at least five books to make it count.

Well, I couldn't find a single one that I want to get rid of. I'm at a tipping point. To get rid of five more books would require a revolution in my personal library philosophy.

The books that are left fall into these categories:

(1) I like looking at them (art books)

(2) I enjoyed reading them so much, there is a good possibility I will read them again

(3) I enjoyed reading them so much, just looking at them gives me pleasure

(4) I haven't read them yet and I intend to

(5) They don't belong to me.

Although I can appreciate the clutter-free peacefulness of dozens of empty shelves, I'm just not ready. These two wool scarves, which have been hanging from a hook in the basement all winter, are a reprieve.

Thirty-five days and counting.

Watercolors and Beaded Pouch

Day 328: Watercolors and Beaded Pouch

The end is near. Thirty-seven days and counting. I find myself often contemplating the final seven days of the stuff project, a scant month from now. What have I learned? What has changed?

It hasn't been what I anticipated. For starters, I imagined that the entire theme of the year would center around saying goodbye to Emma as she left home and entered the next phase of her life. That part has been so much easier than I imagined, partly because she's doing so well, and partly because she's not really gone. Between texting, and calling, and Facebook, and visits every couple of months, she's still part of my every day life, but minus some of the frictions of cohabitation.

I thought it would be a lot harder to find 365 things I don't need or want. Like today. This watercolor set and the little beaded purse have gone unnoticed in a drawer, even after 328 days of scourging. I don't even know what the white elastic thing that was with the other things is. No one would call our house spare, even today.

I am aware of my desire for stuff now in the way that meditation makes me aware of my breathing.

Has it changed me? Has it changed my house, or my family, or the way I use things? I'm thinking about it.

Refrigerator Magnets

Day 327: Refrigerator Magnets

The blush comes off the rose with refrigerator magnets after a while. At first, you notice them and rearrange them into interesting shapes. After a while, they're just visual noise.

These are on the fridge at work now, looking interesting to new sets of eyes.

Or at least, so I hope.

Sewing Machine Oil

Day 326: Sewing Machine Oil

Another item Barbara couldn't bear to throw away when she moved out. I just noticed it on my tool shelf. An item this old isn't a tool any more. It's a piece of Americana. Or perhaps an antique. Or perhaps even art.

With that in mind, I had a suspicion my sister would like it. Yes, she said. She does.

Camel-Colored Pea Coat

Day 325: Camel-Colored Pea Coat

I'm taking a page out of Jeff Plakke's playbook and getting rid of something that's really nice. I haven't worn this coat all winter, and I'm pretty sure I'll never wear it again. I got two great coats at the start of the season, and they fit better and make me feel cuter than this one.

Still, this one is almost new. It's high quality. It looks professional.

Jeff says he's teaching himself to let go of good stuff by imagining the person on the other end of the transaction. The one who gets the find.

Who doesn't love a good Salvation Army find? I got a great pair of Dansko shoes once. A pair of J. Jill pants with the tags still on. An Anne Klein mustard-colored felt jacket. A pair of stoneware bowls, oven safe. Bake-King cake pans with the pivoting cutter like my mother used to have.

If nobody wanted to give away the almost new, high quality, professional-looking stuff they never wear, I'd never get a good find. By giving away this coat, I'm keeping the good find karma flowing.

When this is all over, I'm celebrating with a thrift store crawl.

Bunk Bed Ladder

Day 324: Bunk Bed Ladder

I wish I had a photo of this bunk bed ladder when it was clothed in needlepoint yarn. It was a writhing sculpture. A wicked witch with psychedelic hair. An invitation to touch and stroke, ten thousand strands of color, streaming like a waterfall.

The bunk bed ladder was the vehicle that brought Suzanne's yarn to me, by way of my sister, Suzanne's daughter-in-law. I am grateful that three daughters and a daughter-in-law never took to needlepoint, and so I inherited the yarn from a woman I hardly knew. The needlepoint yarn was a legacy of her lifetime of art. From the yarn flowed to idea to make my own patterns, which transformed needlepoint for me from paint-by-numbers to an effort of self-expression. For an art history major to begin to make her own art - however amateur the design - is a radical shift.

The bunk bed ladder was better in concept than in reality, though. I find the yarn easier to manage separated into a couple dozen color-coded transparent boxes. The yarn gets less tangled that way. I can carry the box to the light and choose the exact right color of cream, or light blue, or pink. Strands don't come loose and entangle themselves in the vacuum cleaner. They don't get dusty, or faded.

I'll miss having the profusion of color throbbing from its corner of the attic. But it's function over form for me. This time, anyway.

World Cup Games on VHS

Day 323: World Cup Games on VHS

When I was a kid my grandfather used to tell stories about the way things were when he was a boy. Once, he snuck his mother's wool blanket out on a camping trip. The boys made a bonfire on the beach, and the blanket got singed. He hid it in the bottom of the cedar chest, but the smell of smoke led her to it. Boy, did he get a whipping! Imagine that: ten-year-old boys camping on Lake Michigan, alone with a bonfire. Another time, he was riding on a horse-drawn double-decker sleigh in Muskegon. The sleigh crashed; everyone on the bottom died, but he was thrown clear. Back in those days, he said, a Baby Ruth bar the size of a football only cost five cents.

When my grandfather was a boy, the stars throbbed in the sky like pinholes to heaven. People went to bed when the sun set, and got up with the sun rose in the morning. The city streets were mostly unpaved; sometimes, they were paved in slippery red brick. Bicycles were new. People bought food from familiar shopkeepers or farmers, and put it in a basket to carry it home. Store bought bread was a special treat.

I got a look at my grandfather's college application a couple weeks ago, pulled from the archives at the Bentley Historical Library. Handwritten, and including a self-assessment of his intellectual capabilities, industry, and scholastic achievement. A couple of sentences about the latest book he'd read, and a postage stamp sized photograph of himself.

When I was growing up, I felt so modern. My grandfather never had t.v.! Not even a radio! No telephone! He didn't have a car! Didn't need one...no interstate! Women couldn't vote, interracial marriage was illegal, and my grandfather played both offense and defense with a real leather helmet and a hand-stitched soft leather ball!

Now I have teenagers, and in their eyes, my own childhood is as quaint and obsolete as my grandfather's was to me. Remember how exciting it was to go to the video store, choose whatever movie you wanted to see, and bring it home to watch it? Remember when a 50 pound personal computer that wouldn't quite fit in the trunk of your car replaced that old manual typewriter, and your word processor allowed you to edit without having to retype the whole thing? Remember when answering machines allowed people to leave a message, even when you weren't at home? Remember when cable t.v. gave you better reception and no advertising?

Wow, that was cool!

Suddenly, I'm more sympathetic to my grandmother, who used always to tell us about her friends and their diseases. Every kid's favorite topic. The days tick past, and I don't notice that wrinkles are a little deeper, or knees a little creakier, or hair a little grayer. Mine, and yours. But lately, I've been to more funerals than in my whole life before. My friends' parents are getting sick, or dying. Once or twice, it's my own friends who are sick, or dying.

The older generation is the front line. I've been soldiering away in the back phalanx, taking it one day at a time. Soccer practices, oil changes, breakfast, vaccinations, budget season, choir performances, Christmas, grocery shopping, car trips, thank you notes, elliptical machine, solitaire, haircuts, diaper changes, yoga classes, driver's training, weddings, coffee dates, trips to the library, toilet plunging, junk mail, cooking, sleep.

And now the front lines are starting to falter, and it's sad, and it's scary, and it's just life. Moving and moving on, like a river. Always changing. Always the same.

Hair Stuff

Day 322: Hair Stuff

Nothing more to say today.

A

Last of the Bee Stuff

Day 321: Last of the Bee Stuff

Our mission-related groups are coming on Thursday afternoon, including Ann Arbor Backyard Beekeepers, aka, A2B2, a group I am proud to say I named. An opportunity to get rid of the very last of my beekeeping stuff, a medium box with a single frame and some honeycomb. I used it as a demonstration at the Things with Wings event at the Gardens last year, and it's been sitting on top of the bookshelf in my office ever since.

Meghan (my former beekeeping mentor) will put it to good use. At least I still have a dozen jars of honey.

Electric Toothbrush Bases

Day 320: Electric Toothbrush Bases

Repeat yesterday's post. Two bases for electric toothbrushes, no electric toothbrushes. Realization that teeth can be cleaned very well with just two minutes of brushing with the old-fashioned plastic toothbrush the dentist hands out for free.

Broken Water Pik

Day 319: Broken Water Pik

The stuff project has made me suspicious of single-purpose appliances, especially ones that use an external power source and that have a perfectly sensible alternative. In June, I was sorely tempted to use part of the Sur la Table birthday gift certificate from my parents to purchase a machine that turns tap water into soda. I used all my self-control to focus on cooking classes, an excellent non-stick frying pan and a couple of really good knives instead. Iced tea is a perfectly good cold beverage, and if I really want soda, I can just buy a bottle (and recycle it when it's empty). This way, I won't be giving away a soda machine in a couple of years, and I can cut a tomato without losing the seeds.

Over the years, we've resisted the urge to buy gas powered yard equipment. We've turned up our noses at our neighbors' power mowers and leaf blowers, with their stink of gas, noisiness and lack of personal grit. Working up a sweat while doing yard work is healthier, more environmentally friendly and provides visible evidence of our moral superiority.

Our days of moral rectitude are over. Rich went out earlier this season and bought a bright red 21 inch Toro snowblower with a 35-foot throwing capacity, a four horsepower engine and the capacity to clear nine inches of snowfall in an eight-car driveway. Woohoo! Yesterday, twelve inches of snow fell, and he and I each spent about a half-hour removing 100% of the snow from our driveway and sidewalks, including the entire driveway apron. In past years, all four of us would have spent a good four hours clearing off the snow - or more likely, two of us would have spent seven hours, and two of us would have spent an hour each, max - and we still would have had to catapult the snow mountain at the base of the driveway like Tough Mudders climbing a greased wall.

Yes, it was loud and it stank. But it was fun, and it was fast. Me and my Fusion slid out of the driveway this morning like butter.

Go power tools!

We may just stay in Michigan after all.

Drawerful of Razors and More

Day 318: Drawerful of Razors and More

When we were in high school, my brother would always finish the Dorito's and put the empty bag back in the cupboard. I had the experience again and again of reaching into the cupboard for some delectable treat, only to find the package empty. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise to me to find the drawers and cupboard of the upstairs vanity full of junk so useless, it is fair to all it garbage.

Such as these dull razors, a single hair roller, a suction cup to hang an unidentified item, and a lid.

Sam asks how I can possibly blog about garbage, and there's a certain embarrassing truth to the question. On the one hand, I'm hitting rock bottom here. On the other hand, how could a person keep a drawerful of garbage. Especially when there are only two tiny working drawers?