sunroom.

I don’t know exactly where my aversion to stuff began. I just know that, over the years, I just grow even more from the little seedling that started when I was a wee one.

My parents are wonderful and giving and also, keeping. They have a lot of stuff. Not in the gross pack rat sense. More in the...we are just running out of place to put things sense. They combat this with a mini-storage space that they pay rent on each month.

I remember going into the kitchen and looking for a screw driver. I was probably seven. “Look in the junk drawer”, my mom said. It was in the kitchen, positioned next to the drawer full of hot pads and wash cloths. I opened it. It was a mess. There were markers that didn’t work, pens that were missing lids, twistie ties from trash bags that had already been used, broken watches and dead batteries. This made me feel frustration. I wasn’t able to completely articulate it at that age, but I distinctly remember thinking about how absurd the idea of a space created and reserved for junk was. “I will not have a junk drawer when I am old,” I told myself. That was the seedling.

When I was in high school and status started to matter, I began to want stuff. I wish I could say that I have always been above that. I haven’t. I didn’t realize that the desire came from what I wanted others to think of me, and not from a genuine place within. Doc Martins. Sandles and boots and the brown wing-tip looking ones with the buckle. Guess jeans and Lucky Jeans and even a sweater from Abercrombie. Sigh. I would come home after my mom had taken me shopping and try on all of these clothes. I would love to imagine myself wearing them out. And then I would pile them on my bed, look at the excess, and feel frustrated. I didn’t know exactly why, but I could articulate that whatever I was seeking through the things wasn’t actually there, on my bed, in the pile. It was lacking, and I felt frustration.

This past summer, despite real life frustrations that came from a social person getting used to spending an excessive amount of time alone and a blatant language barrier, I felt weightless. This was a feeling that, I believe, has been chasing me all of my life. I was living a life that I had wanted to live since the junk drawer revelation and the dissatisfaction of a pile of clothing resting on my mattress. I walked places, not dependent on a vehicle that carries with it either a monthly payment or a need for gasoline or collision insurance. And if it was too far, I took the bus, with other people that didn’t have the weight of metal parked in their garage.

I also had just enough clothing to get me through my time there. I didn’t have a closet, but instead a little cabinet that I turned into a faux wardrobe. My things were folded, not dependent upon hangers. And I didn’t have many options when I felt like I had “nothing to wear”. I just wore what was there. I wasn’t above the feeling, however. I remember lamenting to my friend the fact that “I feel like I wear the same thing over and over.” “You do,” he said, “but it’s not a bad thing. It’s nice not having to bother with having too much to choose from”. And that was key. It’s not that I didn’t have the desire to have more to choose from, but the weightlessness of my situation didn’t leave me much room to make it a bigger deal than it needed to be.

I had been living in the house on the corner that isn’t mine. This house has been there since almost the beginning of time, and the stuff that it holds inside speaks of that almost-truth. It carried with it affordability, and also, a way of living that goes against all that is true inside of me. It’s not weightless at all. I was thankful for the opportunity to have a place to live when I didn’t have anywhere else to go. But something inside of me was sort of being squashed each time I walked through the rooms of stuff to the other rooms of stuff to get to my room that was both full of my stuff and the stuff that was there before I arrived. It was exceptionally full and exceptionally empty, all at the same time. On Saturday, I moved into the garage apartment that I found the day after I started looking for a garage apartment. It’s a big room with a kitchen and a bathroom, and almost more space than I need. This morning, I walked to a place that would have normally driven to. It’s that close. I can ride my bicycle to work. My kitchen has very little cabinet space, and that is something that makes me happy. My clothing takes up one-eighteenth of the closet.


This garage apartment occupies the backyard of one of those lovely large stately homes that I imagine was built with oil money in the twenties. This is the neighborhood that I live in, and these kind of homes surround me, which will supply much material to ponder on my walks. I passed by one this morning that was exceptionally old and raw and wonderful. The paint on the trim was dingy and worn, and it spoke of generations past. I imagined the parties that took place in the ball room over the years, and something lit up inside of me. And then I passed the sun room. Sun rooms are such a wonderful space for bringing people together. When springtime comes and the breeze catches you, bring the outside in...adding such a joyful layer of peace to an engaging conversation with friends. This sunroom, however, was full of junk. There were piles of papers and boxes and things that the homes occupants had accumulated over the years, stuff that they ran out of room for, stuff that they threw into the beautiful sun room because they didn’t have anywhere else to put it. This made me feel frustration. 


I don’t believe everyone needs to get rid of everything and live in a 600 square foot space. It comes in varying degrees, and means different things to different people. I just think that life is too short and there aren’t enough days to let things that aren’t really vital to authentic happiness keep us from living life, for real. I think that some people have to work too much at jobs they abhor to pay for more things than they don’t really need or have time to enjoy. I think that too many people let junk and paper and plastic and boxes occupy their sunrooms, or parlors, assuming they will get to it later, and then they die. I think that the more stuff we have, the easier it is to ignore what’s really going on, or what we are really lacking, and then before we know it, we don’t even know who we are anymore. I think that today, you should get rid of something.