Materials, supplies, or equipment used in various activities. To dunk (basketball). Writing, discourse, talk, or ideas of little value. Trash. To fill by packing things in. Random things.
According to Wikipedia, Stuff is a New Zealand news media website owned by Stuff Ltd and the biggest media website in New Zealand, with a monthly unique audience of more than 2 million.
That’s a lot of stuff.
It’s an interesting concept, stuff. We can “really know our stuff” and we can also have too much stuff. We can be stuffed. We can stuff it. We’re familiar with sayings like “this is the stuff memories are made of…” A somewhat recent fad has been to de-clutter one’s life, to Marie Kondo it. Her website reads: “Our goal is to help more people live a life that sparks joy, and we are committed to offering the simplest, most effective tools and services to help you get there.” The basic principal is if it doesn’t bring you joy, get rid of it. As a humanist (and slight Buddhist) I’m not sure how I feel about that. It fits well with cognitive behavioral therapy (leave the messy and problematic past behind, always move forward, only you have the power to change). It fits well with some of the teachings of mindfulness. We all have a lot of stuff – emotional, mental, and physical.
During lunch I got a text from my step-mother. “… Have you considered selling all of your furniture before you move. You are going to a house that is full of furniture…”
Stuff. I paused, breathed a deep breath. She means well. And sometimes I absolutely think of getting rid of my stuff. I have two chairs, a sofa, 12 plants, two beds, a card table, some pictures, two benches, etc. etc. It’s not much. Physically speaking, it’s all I have. I’m not terribly attached to my stuff, at least not most of it. I have a rock I want to send back to my ex-fiancee. I have a guitar that I’ve never learned to play. I have photo albums. I have books that I probably won’t read. How would I decide?
Stuff…. I texted back a practical answer. “I have… except that I have two brand new beds and nice mattresses a new sofa, etc. at best I’ll get a few hundred bucks for the stuff (and I couldn’t possibly sell all of it) and then when I need to move again it will cost me thousands to replace (more than the cost of moving).” I don’t really know about that last part. Moving is expensive and it might be cheaper to get all new things at a later point. But the practicality of it, uggh. I texted again, “it would be really hard to consolidate everything I own in to what I can fit in my car.” If it’s more than what can fit in a Corolla, then I need a van which means movers or towing my car. And if I’m going to do those things, I might as well keep my stuff. What I wanted to say was – take a minute and look around your house. Now imagine getting rid of everything you have and only keeping enough to fit in the car and maybe a trailer. Think about what all of your stuff means to you. She means well.
I’ve thought about putting all of my stuff in storage and just traveling around the country with the cat. As a single person, I’m willing to forgo a lot of the comforts of home. I sometimes consider taking that step towards the dharma bum vagabond lifestyle. Hat low over my brow, chewing a long yellowed piece of wheat-like grass as I sit cowboy boot legs stretched out on warped wooden floor boards with my back leaning against the open boxcar door riding the rails.
I’m thankful to have a house to go to. It is not my home. I won’t hang pictures or really unpack my stuff. I unpacked just enough down here in Memphis to make the place less than sterile, but not fully home. How much of this stuff defines me? The Banksy art? The big canvas photo of a brick wall and the Vonnegut phrase “so it goes”? The plant that my ex-wife and I got as a house warming gift? The plant my ex-fiancee gave to me? The books? The shot glasses? The shoe boxes of ticket stubs?
I’m not opposed to minimalism – I’ve been slowly working my way there. I want to have fewer things. I want my life to be lighter. I want more of my things to be of quality and have meaning. The Swedish, famous for minimalism, have a term dostadning. It means death cleaning – quite literally cleaning as though you’re dying (so as not to leave so much behind). Kondo isn’t really about minimalism – KonMari’s real push is to surround yourself with things that bring you joy. Memories bring me joy. Experiences bring me joy. Plants bring me peace. A good mattress brings me comfort. So does coffee and a blanket on the sofa on a cold morning. Simple stuff.
When my ex-fiancee decided to move in with me, we began the process of purging. We purged some of her stuff as we packed and a lot of my stuff – more specifically stuff that was left by my ex-wife (boxes of beauty products, way too many bed sheets, tote bags galore). There was my ex’s wedding dress and my ex-fiancee had her husband’s suit – we put them in the same bag and donated them together. There was furniture (sofas and tables) of which we didn’t need two sets. We both liked her stuff better – we had a similar aesthetic. When she left and took her stuff back, I was left with a pretty empty house. I was slow to fill it back up. When I knew I’d be moving, I purged even more stuff. Every week I gave things away, sold them, or threw them out. Ironing board, aquariums, mini greenhouses, desk, treadmill, sofa.
I know these are unprecedented times. I know lots of people are facing setbacks. Mine are fairly minor and I have good supports behind me. I’m trying to minimize the damage of feeling without a home for a prolonged period of time. My plan when I moved here was to rent for five months and buy a house. I chose a slightly more expensive apartment because I could afford it and it was convenient (was still cheaper than my previous mortgage). I paid more to have a short term lease because I planned on settling in to my own place. I was going to make friends and get a dog and grill in the back yard. I was going to stick with this organization and be it’s next CEO. I was going to meet lots of musicians and surround myself with music and BBQ and travel. With a better salary and cheaper cost of living I was going to finally get ahead – or at least do better than break even. This was my plan for starting over in the face of losing a relationship that felt like home. I was let go from my job just before my lease was up and without enough time to assess the situation I had to renew at a slightly increased rate or go month-to-month at a much higher rate. I was let go just before the virus hit, jobs dried up, and the economy tanked. In any good decision making process, one gathers as much data as one can and then makes an educated guess. The state of the world being what it is…. the data is always shifting. Unprecedented means without precedent. Maybe living in times without precedent requires living without stuff as well?
There’s a saying in Buddhism “if you come across the Buddha on the road, kill him.” It means that the true Buddha lives within you and anything outside of that is an imposter. Maybe the same is true for home. I know it’s not in my stuff that makes a place home. I know home isn’t necessarily found in geography. While I tend to think home is in my life partner, I have my doubts and I’m sure the Buddhists would disagree. I’ve certainly been shown a few different times that most things are temporary (shit, if I’m being honest, we all know that everything is temporary)… Just before moving here, I had planned on getting another tattoo. I never got around to it, but figured I would do it when I got down here. It was going to be (and still might be) a slightly tilted compass rose above my heart with the word HOME above it and an arrow pointing away… and then when I found that feeling again (home) I would add the word AGAIN with an arrow pointing back. For a few years now, I’ve believed in letting my heart be my guide. There are of course, the winds of change that seem to want to dictate otherwise. When I got down here, one of my first conversations with my friend Stacy was about this tattoo and my observation that when people pull up roots, they sometimes become permanent wanderers (I was thinking of my ex-fiancee). Stacy said, it doesn’t seem like that’s what I want or who I am – so that probably won’t be the case for me. Now, ten months after deciding to give a new city and a new life a try, I’ll be blowing in to another town – this time with even less of a plan.
I don’t know if I want to drag my stuff with me. After a while it all gets a little heavy. Maybe this is the year of letting go.