"We might need it some day"

One of the main roadblocks people face when decluttering is the belief (usually a fallacy) that they might someday need the products in question. We used to say that all the time (still do, to some extent), and you do, too. Admit it.

That ice cream maker you haven't used in four years? What if you suddenly get a hankering for peach-mint ice cream and need to make some? That DVD of Gone with the Wind that is still in shrink wrap after 10 years? What happens when you want to watch it, but Blockbuster has gone out of business and Netflix doesn't have it?

Yes, tough choices indeed.

We have, by necessity, gotten better about getting rid of things. If we haven't used it for a while and have no prospects of doing so anytime soon, we have been able to part without too much heartache or second-guessing.

The downside to that, though, is what happens when you suddenly do need something you no longer own. I have been faced with that predicament twice in the past few days.

The first time was last week when my mom and I were making potica/kolache (Hungarian/Slovenian nut roll). We went over the list of ingredients several times to make sure I had everything we needed. We determined that all we lacked were walnuts and enough butter, so Mom walked to the grocery store to buy them.

Shortly after she left, it occurred to me that I had sold my rolling pins, sort of a necessity for rolling out dough. See, I hate rolling stuff out. I don't like flouring surfaces that inevitably need to be cleaned. I can never roll things evenly enough. The only time I used my rolling pins were for making gingerbread cookies at Christmas, and I guess I figured we could live without those for a couple years.

Anyway, I tried calling my mom, but she had left her cell phone here. I'm not sure the grocery store would have sold rolling pins anyway. I envisioned us rolling out the dough with bean cans. I wondered if  I could substitute PVC pipe for a rolling pin, but I worried about toxic chemicals leaching into the dough. (I never said I was rational.) Finally I calmed down and went to borrow a rolling pin from my neighbor. It was a win-win: I was able to roll out the dough, and my neighbor got a free nut roll.

The second instance of realizing I might have gotten rid of something prematurely occurred last night. I had made some chicken mole for dinner. The cocoa and spices remind me of Christmas, and I commented that it would be a good Christmastime meal. That prompted a discussion about last year's Christmas Eve dinner: Swiss cheese fondue. Elias didn't like it much because he prefers orange cheese. I asked if he'd like to make cheddar cheese fondue this Christmas Eve, and he said he would.

That's when I realized I sold the fondue pot.

I'm sure I could rig something up, but I'm also sure that I won't bother.

Now, do I regret having sold my rolling pins and fondue pot? No, I don't. As I have learned, I can borrow a rolling pin if I need one. True, it might be harder to find one in an RV park than our regular neighborhood, but I bet it's possible. As for the fondue pot, really, we'll live. It's best not to trust Elias with a long sharp fork covered in scalding cheese anyway.

Shoos!

When I used to dream of having a daughter, I imagined molding her into a miniature version of myself.

Funny how it doesn't really work that way.

See, I was (and largely still am) a tomboy. I preferred baseball to Barbies and Matchbox cars to Rainbow Brite. I never cared for fashion or makeup. Even today, my wardrobe consists of jeans, Old Navy t-shirts, and flip-flops. The closest I get to makeup is Burt's Bee's tinted lip balm.

Yet somehow I have created a daughter who loves nothing more than purses, sunglasses, and, most of all, shoes.

When Anna was about eight months old I had her in a kid's clothing store, and I remember her reaching out to touch the shoes. She threw a fit until I gave her one to carry around while we shopped. I thought it was funny.

One day a few months later we were in a store, and Anna started pointing and saying, "Ooze? Ooze?" Awwww, she was saying "shoes!" One of her first words.

Now it has evolved into a full-blown obsession.

When we were in Texas at the mall where Elias played in the human hamster ball, I took Anna into Stride Rite to look for some shoes. She was in the carrier on my back, and as soon as we walked in I could feel her start squirming with giddiness.

"Ooze!" she yelled.

"Yes, SHoes," I repeated, stressing the "sh."

"Ooze!" she yelled again.

"Yes, SHoes," I repeated.

Imagine that exchange occurring as we passed each of the next three dozen or so pairs of shoes.

Finally, she got the idea that there should be a "sh" sound in there.

"Oosh?" She started saying, a welcome change from the ooze.

"Close. SH-oes."

"Oosh?"

Then she did it.

"Shhhhh. Ooo."

"Yes! Shoe!"

For the next two hours, Anna kept repeating, "shhhhhhh. oooooooo," carefully puckering her little lips into a perfect "sh."

It was quite adorable.

Since then, "shoe" and "shoos" have become her favorite words...and her favorite things.

We were shopping the other day and passed a shoe store. Anna stopped and pointed to each pair in the window, exclaiming, "Shoos! Shoos! Shoos!" She then put her hands behind her back and pressed her face to the window in apparent adoration of the display.

I bought her a pair of cold-weather boots and put them in her closet. When she woke up the next morning, she insisted on holding them while I changed her diaper, and insisted on wearing them all day despite temperatures soaring into the 80s.



Yesterday we went to a Disney outlet store. I was perusing the goods while Anna hung out with my mom in another part of the store.

"Oh!" I heard Anna exclaim. We thought she was happy to have spotted me. A split second later, she squealed, "SHOOOOOOOS," jumped out of my mom's arms, and made a beeline to a display of black Crocs lined with red fur. She grabbed a pair off the rack, sat down on the floor, and proceeded to remove her brown Converse to try them on. How could I tell her no?

I realize that buying my daughter shoes negates our attempt to reduce the number of things we own. But they're so cute, and they make her so happy, and they're small enough that they really don't take up much room. (Plus I only buy on sale.)

And that is how my 17-month old daughter came to own more shoes than I do.

Laundry Day

Until recently, I had a lot of clothes. The nice thing about having a lot of clothes is that I could avoid doing my laundry for up to two weeks.* Although it felt nice to purge the closet, fewer clothes meant that I'd have to do laundry more often.

You know what, though? It turns out it isn't so bad.

See, I have come to realize that it's not the actual doing of the laundry that I despise. I have no problem throwing some clothes into a machine and sitting back while it does its work. No, what I dread is the sorting (after two weeks, there are too many clothes for one load), folding, hanging, and putting away.

This is what my typical laundry "day" used to look like:

1. Sort clothes (either by general color or by "what's closer to the top of the hamper/what's closer to the bottom").

2. Throw one load into the washer while the other load(s) sit on the bathroom floor.

3. Five hours later, remember that I have clothes in the washer.

4. Move clothes into dryer.

5. Determine whether anything else (besides the loads on the floor in the bathroom) needs to be washed. If so, return to step 1. If not, continue to step 6.

6. Don't bother getting the clothes out of the dryer.

7. Next day, rummage through the clothes in the dryer until I find something not too wrinkled to wear that day. Close the dryer door.

8. Repeat step 7 for a couple more days, or until something else needs to be put in the dryer, or until Steve complains about the clothes on the bathroom floor, or until I have depleted my supply of clean yet unwrinkled clothes to wear.

9. Put clothes in the dryer on touch-up.

10. Two hours later, remember that the touch-up cycle ended 1 hour and 42 minutes ago. Put clothes on touch-up again.

11. Half an hour later, remember the clothes had been on touch-up and decide they're probably still warm enough that I can smooth them out without having too many wrinkles.

12. Dump clothes on the bed and smooth out shirts. Put everything else in a pile.

13. If Steve is at work, leave stuff on the bed until he gets home. Secretly hope he works overtime.

14. When Steve gets home, move the piles onto a chair.

15. Eventually Steve complains about the clothes on the chair, and I grudgingly put everything away.

Total time to do a load of laundry: About one week.

Here's the thing, though: When you hardly have any clothes, the annoying steps are reduced/eliminated.

No need to sort, because everything fits in one load!

Folding/putting stuff on hangers takes only a minute, because there aren't that many items to deal with!

Putting stuff away, also, takes almost no time because there are almost no clothes!
It's almost refreshing.

(*Please note that I'm talking about my laundry. The kids' laundry--especially the diapers--get done much more often. And Steve does his own. It's in our prenup.)

Un-Purging

I bought some shirts yesterday. I'm not supposed to be buying anything these days, but I had a predicament.

See, a while back when I whittled down my wardrobe, I found some clothes that had been packed away since I grew out of them when I was pregnant with Anna. I decided to keep a few of them but I neglected to try them on, which I should have, because they're too short now.

Some of you might be reacting the way my husband did: "What, having a baby made you taller?"

No. But it did make me flabbier. Whereas once I might not have minded my tummy peeking through when I lift my arms, I do now.

Steve suggested maybe I could do some exercises to help with that.

I suggested it would be a lot easier if I bought some new shirts and he kept his mouth shut.

So that's what we did. I will, of course, get rid of an equal amount of existing shirts so I can keep everything balanced. And maybe I'll do a few sit-ups someday.

Zen

A surprising number of people have told me that I've inspired them to declutter their homes. (Feels good, doesn't it?)

I just stumbled upon a great blog post that someone on another full-time RV site had linked to. It's about decluttering your life, zen-style. Even though I'm already in the process of doing so, I had some "a-ha moments" while reading it.

It's a quick, enlightening read, so if you're at all interested, check it out: http://zenhabits.net/simplify-love-your-stuff/

Purging, Part 2 (clothing)

Yesterday I tackled a task I kept putting off: Getting rid of my clothes.

Our new wardrobe space will be decent by RV standards, but nowhere near as large as our already overflowing residential closet. Given space and weight concerns (even clothes get heavy when you have enough of them), we need to downsize greatly.

I'm not sure why I had been putting off this task. I'm no fashionista. My wardrobe consists mostly of Old Navy t-shirts and jeans, so it's not like I'm shedding pricey designer duds. I guess I mostly dreaded the task of clearing out the closet because cleaning is never really fun.

Rather than choose what to get rid of, I decided to choose what I'm keeping. (Same result, slightly different psychology.) I decided to allow myself five pieces of each type of clothing (long sleeve shirts, short sleeve shirts, etc.), and 10 pairs of socks and underwear. Shirts can be re-worn in a pinch. Underwear...not so much.

I emptied everything from the closet onto the bathroom floor and started sorting. (This is a great experiment to do with a curious 15-month-old.) (Note sarcasm.)

I found a few things I had forgotten about and decided to keep. I easily threw a ton of stuff--including some items I thought I really liked--onto the "donate" pile.

Within an hour, I had packed up six bags of clothes for the Salvation Army, and had significantly pared down my wardrobe. Here's what remains:

The final result:

• 5 long-sleeved shirts
• 6 short-sleeved shirts
• 4 tank tops
• 4 nursing tanks
• 3 pairs of jeans
• 2 pairs of shorts
• 2 pairs of capris
• 1 sweatshirt
• 1 blouse (just in case)
• 1 dress (just in case)
• (I still have to go through my pajamas, but that should only take a few minutes.)

Looking at that list, it still seems like a lot, or perhaps my sense of reality is skewed. If it turns out I don't need that many things, I can pare down more later.

At some point I'll reduce Elias's clothes, although I'll allot him more since he gets dirtier.

Anna will be allowed as many clothes as I want because they're small, and because I waited my whole life to dress a girl and I'm not going to let small closets ruin my dream. Plus we opted for the larger wardrobe in the kids' room in lieu of the outdoor kitchen, so I might as well take advantage.

Purging

Right now I'm reading a travel memoir by a woman who lost her house in the Southern California firestorms of 1994. Rather than rebuild or relocate, she and her husband bought an RV and traveled around the country.

I was mesmerized by her description of what it was like to lose her house. She and her husband fled as the fire unexpectedly rained down on their neighborhood, and when they went back the next day, the only thing still standing was their shower stall. Everything was gone, and she felt... relieved. Not devastated, but liberated.

Yes, she had lost some items of sentimental and monetary value, but she had also lost a bunch of crap. You know, all those clothes you never wear and keep meaning to go through but never do? All those trinkets you've accumulated to gather dust on a shelf? All the stuff?

When I first read that, I wasn't shocked--I could sort of relate. Obviously I haven't lost a house to a fire, but a couple years ago it looked like we would have to evacuate because of one. I had hours to pack up the car. I packed a suitcase of clothes and toiletries, some books and toys for Elias, his blanket, our lock-box and CDs of photos. The computer, food for the dog, camera, cell phone. And then I looked around. There were a lot of other things I could pack, but didn't. My journals from high school, jewelry, old letters... in the wake of a potential disaster none of it seemed that important.

Since then I've tried to use that philosophy--"Would you be devastated if you lost this in a fire?"--to clear out our extra junk. Sadly, I've never really gotten anywhere with it. Our house is full of stuff. Stuff.

Over the past couple weeks, we've been trying to get rid of everything we don't really need. Our stuff is weighing us down and we want to be liberated. More than once, Steve and I have wished that our house really would be consumed by fire so we won't have to go through everything, and then we curse the day we decided to put in the fire sprinklers.

We are making headway, though.

For example, I have cleared out a lot of my books. I'm a book-hoarder. When we moved into this house, Steve's parents paid to have someone build bookshelves to fit the cathedral ceiling in our living room and the closet in Elias's bedroom. The shelves were packed--and then some. I had saved nearly every book from nearly every history class I took in college just in case I ever wanted to read them again. For the same reason, I saved nearly every book I had purchased over the past decade. Of course I rarely even thought about, let alone read through, any of them, but I had to hold on.

Our trailer will only have a carrying capacity of about 3,000 pounds, though, so the books had to go. I sold some of them to an online bookstore that sells textbooks. I made about $100. Most of the rest got carted to the library for them to use or sell--about 300 in all. I still have several more that I'll either put in storage or re-read (for real) before we go, but I have made major headway.

Today I went through Elias's books. Those were harder to weed out since, unlike my books, those actually get read. I did select about 150 (about a quarter of the overall total) to sell at our upcoming garage sale or donate. A dozen or so will go with us in the trailer, and the rest will go into storage. I plan on rotating out the books each time we're back in California, and I'm going to try my best not to buy any more.

Oh, a Kindle or Nook is in my future.

What about our other stuff?

I have reduced our DVD collection to one large portfolio--the cases have gone into the recycling.

Thanks to iTunes, we can get rid of most of our CDs.

VHS tapes? Who needs those?

Photos will be kept, of course, in storage. We have a digital frame (still in the box after several years) that can hold lots of pictures in our new home.

Then there are my personal mementos. Papers from high school and college. Journals. Letters from old friends. Cards that people sent to my parents to congratulate them on my birth. Pictures I drew in kindergarten. All that stuff.

Over the years I whittled it down to three boxes. Today, I whittled it down to one. All I really needed to get rid of were my college notebooks. Why was I holding onto those anyway?

And that is the question I have been asking all day: Why am I saving this?

Why am I saving my college application essay? Why am I saving my drawings from kindergarten? The only time I look at them is when I'm going through boxes trying to get rid of them. Maybe my kids will enjoy looking at them someday, but maybe not.

Then there are my journals. I haven't read them since I wrote them, and yet... they're still here. Why? Will I ever actually look back at them? I can only hope my kids never do. Yet I couldn't bear to throw them away. They're a piece of my past and a piece of me. It's nice to have a reminder that I did have a life before adulthood, motherhood, and all that responsibility.

In that sense, I'm glad that we have the luxury to pick and choose what we'll keep and what we'll get rid of. Yes, it would be a relief not to have to do the work. Yes, in the long run, I doubt I'd care about losing my high school diploma or birth announcement. But as long as we have room in our tiny storage unit, there are some things I can't let go of just yet.