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For years I’ve been dreaming of a time when I would be free of “stuff”. Sure, having everything can be useful, (Who do You ask when you want to borrow something?) but unless there’s a real clear order for everything, it’s just wasting space in your life. When you ask yourself “Where did I put that?” too often, you should understand that you have a problem. There’s a nice survey here to determine your Clutter Quotient. My favorite part was:

6. Your Acquiring Habits
You see something shiny. You buy it. Then you buy another for a spare, in case the first shiny thing gets dull. You cram both into your home, where you have hundreds of other once-shiny things, all of which are now dull, but you promise yourself to polish them one day. You buy polish.

This quote pretty much defines what I’ve had to put up with over the years. It’s not only one person’s fault, it’s really everyone wanting to hold on to their stuff and seing theirs as more valuable than what others want to keep. To pinpoint more specifically, I see two problems:

• Emotional attachment to objects: Throwing away needs to be Okay! Stop looking at me like I’m commiting a sin because I suggest that it’s time to get rid of the 20 year old alarm clock because the tape deck doesn’t work and it’s door is being kept shut with scotch tape.


• The blame game: Alice wants to throw something out that belongs to Bob, Bob says Carol is taking up too much room, and Carol says both Alice and Bob keep more useless things than she does.

I’ve been feeling trapped for a long time. I’ve tried to do some things to get control over the amount of clutter in my house, but when you don’t control what comes in and what (doesn’t) go out, you really can’t solve the problem. It’s pretty depressing. I’ve watched so many episodes of Trading Spaces, Clean Sweep, and What Not to Wear on TLC that I think I could run my own program and sometimes even dream about it. Although I can’t change it, at the least it has made me more aware of my shopping and living habits. I’ve tried to make the best of it, often putting to use the extra stuff we have. An example: who brought ironing equipment to school so we could iron shirts at 5AM in the underventilated computer lab? Yeah, that’s me.

But realistically, who wants to live a life crippled by stuff? Not me and I’m dying for a change.

There is some good news to this story. I’m moving! Is there an end to this foolishness?! Unfortunately, today I have found out that that day hasn’t come yet. I have a few people who are enthusiastically helping to get my stuff together for the move. I’ve had people say that this is great and I will be well prepared, and I do agree to some extent. However, there is an art of compromise that is needed here. I thought I had the situation under control, trying to express my opinions and sometimes just giving in to some battles that would leave too many hurt feelings to bother fighting for.

Today was another bump in the road that pushed me to write this entry. I was willing to take some of the excess furniture that we have for the sake of clearing room in the house. I didn’t like all of the pieces, but I thought that they would be of good use to me, and then I could move on and buy my own replacements.

However, it turns out I was expected to return the furniture back to Montreal. What?! That’s right. Paying some crazy transportation fees to move back furniture that people were begging me to take in the first place. For what purpose? So they can sit in some room, cluttering up our lives and causing more stubbed toes.

Do I need this? No, I really don’t. It just makes me feel I should move with the shirt on my back. I’m re-thinking the whole move thing, and I just might achieve my IKEA dream home sooner rather than later.

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