From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

I am so crabby today!!! I’m not myself. I hate trying to eliminate stuff I’ve saved for 70 years. I’ve accumulated so many treasures.

Yesterday I found a file containing letters and cards from people that meant so much to me through the years…Betsy from SC; Vangie from WI, Michael in the Peace Corps in Africa, Jim, Jerry, Carol, Bill and Dave… Letters are so personal. My mom loved getting handwritten letters she could hold and reread numerous times through the years. I have that  same feeling about personal letters. They remind me of who I was at that time of life.

It’s hard to decide what to do with all these things.

DO I THROW, SAVE or DONATE?

I can throw Mom’s old yearbooks from high school; I don’t know who those folks are anyway, but I enjoy reading the comments her friends wrote in the annuals. What to do about her collection of china cups and saucers? She loved drinking coffee from fine china and served weak Norwegian coffee at her coffee parties. I wore her satin wedding dress but now acknowledge that my granddaughters will not be wearing it. Prom dresses were given to a thrift shop years ago.

Dave is a wiz at cleaning out our garage, but he tosses everything into garbage containers. The closets inside our house are stuffed full. All my spring cleaning cast-offs end up in the garage, to my dear husband’s chagrin. So far, I’ve refused to purchase a storage locker. To have an extra storage unit sitting in my yard would be embarrassing, and I don’t want to pay a monthly storage fee to rent some industrial-sized locker lined up next to hundreds of other boxes of goods that folks couldn’t find a place to store.

I’ve come to the realization that fewer things make me happier since cleaning out the condo of my mother-in-law. She chose beautiful things to surround herself with. I still appreciate her taste in home decor and clothing. But each time she moved, from a large home to a smaller condo to an even smaller apartment, she had to decide what things she would part with. It was tough. Giving away or selling her valued objects wore on her emotions, her energy and caused some sleepless nights.

When it came time to disband her apartment, it was up to her family to decide what would go where. Though Agnes had lovely taste, her family already had their homes stuffed with furniture and trinkets. Her relatives either had homes of their own, were still in college or without a place of their own to accommodate Grandma’s radios, TV’s, sofas, chairs, pictures, her linens, cookware and coats.

When I wander the floors of Ikea, the Swedish household goods shop near the Mall of America, I check out the tiny living spaces they show as examples of an unfettered lifestyle. Nope, I’m not ready to live in a space of four hundred and some feet. That’s not my idea of comfort…yet.

But when I see signs for the Remodelers’ Showcase Homes or new homes listed, their super-sized dimensions of living space are abhorrent to me. Think of having to clean all that space, the time and expense of furnishing it, paying taxes on the place! We end up owning too many things: they tend to crowd out the life they were meant to enhance.

I don’t want to be owned by my things. My husband mentions this when he attempts his annual garage cleaning, but he has trouble getting rid of stuff too. Just check out what was hidden in the rafters of our garage: cross-country skis we haven’t used for at least 20 years, curtains that hung in the house we purchased 40 years ago, bentwood chairs, a walker, crutches and Andy’s red wagon. Stuffed on ledges are scrapbooks, pots for planting, an unused air-conditioner, microwave and woodworking equipment Dave means to use at some point in his retirement. Many  families can’t park their cars in their garages because they are too jammed with things. I know of a few neighbors that have that issue. It has to do with our fondness for STUFF.

Housing size has ballooned. The average size of a new American home in 1950 was 983 square feet; by 2011, the average new home was 2,480 square feet. Today the average home is 2,598 square feet; double and triple sized McMansions are being built today on land where smaller houses have been torn down. In 1950, an average of 3.37 people lived in each American home; in 2011, that number shrunk to 2.6 people. In 2023 stats tell us that 2.51 people live in an average home in America. We take up more than three times the amount of space per capita than we did 60 years ago.

What are we storing in all those boxes we cart from place to place to place? Our country’s super-sized homes don’t appear to provide enough space to store all our possessions. Our country today has a personal storage industry valued at $22 billion!

What’s the point of our enormous consumption with stuff? The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that 39 percent of the food Americans buy finds its way into our trash. What a waste!

Do things buy happiness? Northwestern University psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen wrote “American consumers have increased their buying substantially since 1950, but our happiness levels have flattened.”

Though we love to buy things and surround ourselves with the latest electronic gadgets, the latest clothing styles, cars and ample living space, we intuitively know that a happy life is based on relationships, experiences and meaningful work. May you be happy and content living an uncluttered, simple life.

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.