Our Accumulations

Dear Diary,

I have too much stuff. Just today I tried to get rid of things...spring cleaning, you know? But as I went through all of the objects in my world, I found myself getting stuck in moment after moment of memories that each item of clothing or knick-knack brought forth. Csikszentmihalyi writes that, "...things stabilize our sense of who we are; they give a permanent shape to our views of ourselves that otherwise would quickly dissolve in the flux of consciousness."

Why is it that we all become buried in our stuff? Does it happen more easily to women than men? I got talking about this the other night with my boyfriend's mother and her sister. All of the us seemed to agree that a women is more likely to have sentimental attachment to objects than men; making for a more difficult departure with their 'stuff.' This was all based on first hand experience. My boyfriend's mother explained the situation in which she recently donated the remnants of their garage (they just moved) to a neighborhood church. Before it was to be collected, her husband began to go through the items asking if she was sure she wanted to get rid of them. At first she did the same thing that I found myself doing, reminiscing about the memories tied to the object and said, "I wanted to keep everything and tell the church picker-uppers to turn around and go back." While a fair share of the men we know, are able to keep their belongings minimal. Like my dad, he would own just one pair of pants and one tshirt if it weren't for my mom buying him new things all the time and managing his clothing.

There is something of beauty that can be found in every object; the slightly smooth texture that soothes your thumb when you rub it, or the way the orange bit glints in the sunshine. When is the moment that you are ready to get rid of something? What makes me so horrible at this while others can successfully keep their lives minimized with stuff.

There's that saying that one person's trash is another person's treasure. What if the one person is never able to give up their trash?