“Had I imagined that, at some point, twelve people would be in my house wanting champagne?
Everything about the glasses disappointed me: their number, their ridiculous height, the idea of them sitting up there all these years, waiting for me to throw a party.” I loved the Ann Patchett piece. The entire section of confronting the glassware was just so accurate.
I sympathise with the decluttering dilemma -- not even four months after our Big Move (when I got rid of half my belongings) I’m ready to toss more. I know the “bas, kas en was” mantra well, but find it impossible to keep only three outfits. Why is it so hard? Anxiety plays a roll -- keeping everything feels safe, but not being able to get rid of stuff makes me anxious. And thanks for the image of the sad T-shirt, forever (not) composting somewhere in a landfill -- we all need to do better 🌱🤍
'Keeping everything feels safe, but not being able to get rid of stuff makes me anxious'. It's a conundrum, and I think it is unsolvable. It's just a thing we will return to over and over again. Also: I lived with very few clothes this past year. I'm not a clothes addict but by this age one has accumulated stuff. I could not wait to get home and wear some different things. I got so sick of my stuff. I also wore them out! So I will never be bas-kas-was on the clothing front, but I'm cool with that.
Loved the Ann Patchett essay! Her guilt at passing on her problem to someone else is one of the things that stops me throwing more away. That, and the fact that I’ve so often needed something within months of throwing it away, having hoarded it pointlessly for decades! Thanks once again for provoking thought... and yes, I think I’ll do the reset with you again next month. My goals have changed dramatically since last January! Looking forward to it.
Thanks for sharing this reminder about stuff, Karin. It's an ongoing struggle. Having moved around a lot in recent years, I was constantly confronted with the accumulation of my and my family's things. It's quite weird, when actually you need so much less. I lost all of those hoarded sentimental things (books, my children's drawings, notebooks, photo albums, cards, letters) in the Durban flooding in 2022 - having painstakingly and very carefully packed them all into two big plastic containers for our move to the Netherlands. I'd like to say I'm over it, but I still think about them. It's not like I took them out and looked at/read these things very often, but there was comfort in knowing they were there. I'm not sure what it is - maybe a tiny way in which we can capture time? Our thoughts and moments in time? I don't know...
All in all we lost about a quarter of our belongings in the floods. It wasn't all bad. Other than those personal items I mentioned, I'd probably recommend starting over with very little at some point in life - it felt kind of liberating... sitting there in an empty room on a newly purchased carpet (ha ha - from the hell hole that is IKEA) with some chairs loaned to us by our new neighbours. And you think "Ok, so we start again.."
I didn't realise that you'd lost such important stuff in the floods. Of course one doesn't look at those kinds of boxes often, but when you do, it's always emotional (in a good way), so I can imagine that it would take a very long time to forget that you've lost something like that. And as you say, those things are a comfort because they're a kind of buoy, a thing we can return to take stock and to remember and so on. What a hard loss.
Strangely, I had another (private) comment from someone who also lost everything in a recent flood. And this Love Letter started partially as a response to the flood that wiped out all my old letters from when I was at varsity and travelling around as a young person. So the 'ongoing struggle' part seems sometimes to also be accompanied by losses major and minor that also shape the way we feel about what we own.
Thanks for sharing that. I hope many new memories have been made on and around your new Ikea (!) carpet.
Look forward to the January reset. And stuff. I am surrounded by stuff, a part of me wants to get rid of Everything.
“Had I imagined that, at some point, twelve people would be in my house wanting champagne?
Everything about the glasses disappointed me: their number, their ridiculous height, the idea of them sitting up there all these years, waiting for me to throw a party.” I loved the Ann Patchett piece. The entire section of confronting the glassware was just so accurate.
I sympathise with the decluttering dilemma -- not even four months after our Big Move (when I got rid of half my belongings) I’m ready to toss more. I know the “bas, kas en was” mantra well, but find it impossible to keep only three outfits. Why is it so hard? Anxiety plays a roll -- keeping everything feels safe, but not being able to get rid of stuff makes me anxious. And thanks for the image of the sad T-shirt, forever (not) composting somewhere in a landfill -- we all need to do better 🌱🤍
'Keeping everything feels safe, but not being able to get rid of stuff makes me anxious'. It's a conundrum, and I think it is unsolvable. It's just a thing we will return to over and over again. Also: I lived with very few clothes this past year. I'm not a clothes addict but by this age one has accumulated stuff. I could not wait to get home and wear some different things. I got so sick of my stuff. I also wore them out! So I will never be bas-kas-was on the clothing front, but I'm cool with that.
Loved the Ann Patchett essay! Her guilt at passing on her problem to someone else is one of the things that stops me throwing more away. That, and the fact that I’ve so often needed something within months of throwing it away, having hoarded it pointlessly for decades! Thanks once again for provoking thought... and yes, I think I’ll do the reset with you again next month. My goals have changed dramatically since last January! Looking forward to it.
Thanks for sharing this reminder about stuff, Karin. It's an ongoing struggle. Having moved around a lot in recent years, I was constantly confronted with the accumulation of my and my family's things. It's quite weird, when actually you need so much less. I lost all of those hoarded sentimental things (books, my children's drawings, notebooks, photo albums, cards, letters) in the Durban flooding in 2022 - having painstakingly and very carefully packed them all into two big plastic containers for our move to the Netherlands. I'd like to say I'm over it, but I still think about them. It's not like I took them out and looked at/read these things very often, but there was comfort in knowing they were there. I'm not sure what it is - maybe a tiny way in which we can capture time? Our thoughts and moments in time? I don't know...
All in all we lost about a quarter of our belongings in the floods. It wasn't all bad. Other than those personal items I mentioned, I'd probably recommend starting over with very little at some point in life - it felt kind of liberating... sitting there in an empty room on a newly purchased carpet (ha ha - from the hell hole that is IKEA) with some chairs loaned to us by our new neighbours. And you think "Ok, so we start again.."
I didn't realise that you'd lost such important stuff in the floods. Of course one doesn't look at those kinds of boxes often, but when you do, it's always emotional (in a good way), so I can imagine that it would take a very long time to forget that you've lost something like that. And as you say, those things are a comfort because they're a kind of buoy, a thing we can return to take stock and to remember and so on. What a hard loss.
Strangely, I had another (private) comment from someone who also lost everything in a recent flood. And this Love Letter started partially as a response to the flood that wiped out all my old letters from when I was at varsity and travelling around as a young person. So the 'ongoing struggle' part seems sometimes to also be accompanied by losses major and minor that also shape the way we feel about what we own.
Thanks for sharing that. I hope many new memories have been made on and around your new Ikea (!) carpet.