On stuff

A friend commented to me the other day that I seem to have a problem with stuff. I guess I say the word in such a way that, if you were transcribing my speech, you'd have to somehow mark that word, like Stuff, stuff, "stuff," or STUFF.

I'm really quite ambivalent about stuff, and that's related to the lifestyle I've adopted. On one hand, I like stuff. I like it a lot. I love having nice matching furniture and pretty pictures hanging on the walls. I like my houseplants and my books and my little teapot collection.


But on the other hand, my love of stuff bothers me, both because I feel it means I'm materialistic and because it's an unrealistic love to have when one up and moves every year or two or three.

About three years ago, in preparation for an international move, we purged the majority of our belongings. It was both exhilaratingly (is that a word? Firefox thinks not) freeing and deeply painful. A wise woman who had already been through moving away from and then back to the U.S. warned us that living overseas would change us. We'd come back and open the small number of boxes we'd lovingly packed and kept in storage, and we'd look at things and say, "Why'd we keep that?" And indeed, much of what we're getting rid of now is stuff we paid to keep in storage for two years. (And of course there were things we sold in a garage sale three years ago that I wish we'd kept.)

I'm surprised by what things are difficult to get rid of. For T, it is books. I can see on his face how excruciatingly painful it is to put even a single book in the "sell/give away" box. I have to keep him away from the box because each time he looks at it, he'll pull a few books out again. For me, the decision to try to sell our bird cage was enough to bring tears to my eyes. My teapot collection is extremely impractical for someone who moves as much as I do, but which teapots do I get rid of? The one that belonged to my grandmother? The one T bought for me in Morocco? The Brown Betty, the largest, most useful of the set? No, I still can't part with a single one.

But one way or another, room must be made. Baby S.'s car seat arrived today (thanks, Grandma and Grandpa S.!), and it is currently sitting (still in the box) inconveniently in the living room, large and ominous, warning of more stuff to come.