I read a funny quote on Facebook the other day. Life consists of three phases:
1. Wanting stuff
2. Collecting stuff
3. Getting rid of stuff
Camilla and I have hit phase three I believe. At our age I think it's natural to start thinking about "downsizing" and a big part of that involves evaluating what you have and what you can do without. As I was emptying the dishwasher and putting things away the other day I stopped and actually looked at the wall cupboard where we keep our coffee mugs. My lord...why do we have over 30 coffee mugs...in addition to the white ceramic coffee cups that match one of our china sets. I have not counted to see what the actual total is. I'm afraid to. I did however take a quick photo of that wall cupboard just to give readers some idea of how runaway our "collecting" of coffee mugs has gone.
I would guess that we are not any different than a large number of other folks. Our American economy is based on consumerism so companies have always worked hard to increase our desire to have "stuff". We have been convinced that possessions are a sign of wealth, and wealth equals worth to many. So we buy, collect and accumulate more stuff to in order to make us feel better about ourselves. Not because we need more stuff but we long for more worth. When we get a new thing it makes us feel better about ourseves, at least for a while.
So going back to my question about why we have so many coffee mugs. We both have a small number of "favorites" that we use most days. Usually we make a pot of regular coffee each morning and then a pot of decaf in the afternoon but we usually use the same cup all day, and sometimes I use the same mug for more than one day with just a hot water rinse between days. Some of our mugs have been gifts, I think we brought a few home from my parent's home after mom died. We did a lot of travel in the first several years after I retired and some of the cups are souvenirs from places we have visited. I have a colorful Route 66 mug as we have traveled that road a few times on our way to Arizona. It might be the mug I use most often. A basic fact of life is that "too much of anything is the beginning of a mess." In truth we have created a mess and having a lot of stuff just complicates our lives.
So which mugs would we eliminate if we wanted to simplify our lives? I'm not sure yet, but I think we will find out one of these days soon but coffee mugs are just the tip of the clutter iceberg.
Our clothing is just as much a nightmare as our coffee cups. My closet was full, tightly packed full of shirts, in fact I was using two closets, one just for shirts and another for pants. There were, and still are, so many shirts that the closet rods were literally packed so tight that it was hard to get a hanger off the rod without messing up 2 or three adjoining hangers. Before retirement I was using lots of shirts, a clean ironed dress shirt every day. Now some of those same shirts are still hanging there, unworn for several years. Earlier this week I cleaned out my shirt closet, pants closet, and went through my sweaters and sweatshirts and I ended up taking 3 large bags of clothes to the Salvation Army.
We have lots more to donate or sell in order to simplify our lives, but at least we have started moving in the right direction.
3 comments:
I totally understand - in many ways the fire was like a freedom even though the family memories we would still like to have - most everything else we could do without. I loved our old furniture and don't like our new furniture - we will figure it out eventually. Roy and I share one walk-in closet with one rod. A set 10 coffee cups, one set of dishes instead of five, two sets of utensils instead of five. Realizing we are happy with a lot less than we had and we aren't saying "it burned" less often.
I find myself asking, "How did all this stuff get here?" Obviously someone is sneaking into the house at night and discarding all their unwanted clothing (which just by coincidence is my size) by hanging it neatly in that part of the closet one dares never go ... I've taken to using my "uniform" shirts (Purdue logo with the veterinary college moniker on them) as "work shirts" where I'm pretty sure they are going to be splattered with paint, slashed with broken tree limbs, or otherwise destroyed. At least then it "wasn't my fault" for throwing out a "perfectly useable" shirt, pants, etc. It's either that or I'm going to have to start sneaking into other people's houses at night and putting my clothing in the part of their close where no one ever goes. Quentin ... you don't happen to hide a key to your back door under the door mat, do you .... just askin'
Yay! I finally got back here to read the coffee cup post. I love it.
I started downsizing near the end of Rick's home hospice period. There wasn't much else to do besides clean and organize and write in "The Log." The Log was a Google doc that was shared with everyone who had the link, and it was the way I/we got information to all the people who cared about him and kept them up to date with what was happening.
The coffee cups were up to about 20. Nothing like your collection, but that's probably because we both had a tendency to break breakable things like dishware and ceramic cups and glasses. A lot of them.
The count was down to about 4 I think, and then this summer a local potter made a gift of the largest coffee mug I've ever had. And it is my new favorite!
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