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.