Decoration Proliferation

Everyone has it.  The older you are, the larger the growth will be.  It festers and multiplies in the dark recesses of our lives until it becomes overwhelming....

It's the great Creeping Christmas Crap disease. 

No matter which late-in-the-year holiday you celebrate, there's bound to be a proliferation somewhere in your home.  Christmas is the worst though.

Here's how it happens...silently, stealthily.....

At some point in your life you decided it was time to get some Christmas decorations.  Maybe you got married or rented your first apartment.  Perhaps your parents gave you a few of their old decorations but most likely you went to a store and bought some that suited you and you merrily decorated your abode.

After the holiday you packed the decorations up and stored them...in the attic, basement or closet where they'd be safe until next year.  For the remaining 11 months, life went on and you forgot about the sleigh bells and glass balls in the attic.  Before you knew it, it was November and even before the turkey went into the oven, the stores were already loaded with sale priced Christmas decor.  This year there were cool bubble and LED lights and interesting new balls for the tree.  You couldn't avoid it, so you perused and picked up a few more tchotchkes for your Christmas decorating.

In December, Mom gave you a Hummel ornament and if you decided to have kids right off the bat, they made their own ornaments out of construction paper, popcorn, glitter and crayons.   This year your tree was loaded with the new stuff and the original items you had from the attic, but you managed to squeeze most of it on the little tree.  What didn't fit, you hung around the house.

Fast forward to 5 years later.... In the attic are several years worth of new decoration purchases.  You like to change the theme of the tree when you can, but you might want to go back and mix in a few of the older ornaments.  You can't get rid of any of it because each ornament brings back memories of Christmas past, but each year you add to the collection.  Your kids are still young and you still have all their handmade adornments.  Your little tree didn't have enough branches, so you purchased a bigger one, but it already had the lights attached so you didn't need the ones you had.

After a few more years, not all the Christmas boxes came down from the attic.  There isn't enough room for it all, so you had to leave some of it up there, yet each year you accumulate more via after-holiday sales or when you purchased ornaments from different places you visited.

For many in middle age or later, the Christmas "growth" has reached mammoth proportions in the attic.  One recent year, while visiting family I witnessed dozens of boxes, wreaths and miscellaneous jingling bags emerging from the dark void above the garage.  This was the beginning of the process.  A new step was involved...deciding which of the items would be used.  Whatever didn't make the cut was hoisted back up the narrow attic steps to spend another year baking up in the rafters.  There was so much stuff that every empty inch of visible counter space, shelving or other flat surface contained something that glittered or resembled a Poinsettia.  The process of placing it all took at least an entire day, if not more.  Christmas decorating had become a job unto itself.

Nearly every home I visit has a holiday accumulation.  Some are gargantuan.  In some cases 30, 40 or even 50 boxes in the attic contain Christmas items.  Lower boxes are crushed and practically fossilized under the weight of accumulation above them.  Among it all are multiple trees and stands, old tangled strings of lights and dry rotted boxes of ornaments.  Decades old garland disintegrates when touched and plastic tree decorations crumble from years of searing summer attic heat.

The first thing I hear is "Can you sell all that old Christmas stuff for us?"

Nope.  Everyone has more than they need.  They don't want yours too.

Some homes give all holidays equal treatment, so the Christmas accumulation is multiplied many times to include Halloween, Easter, Valentines Day and perhaps Groundhog Day.

Certainly, holiday items that are old enough to be antiques are prized, especially if they survive 50 years of storage, but 99.9% of it is absolutely unsaleable.

Best course?  Do a decoration purge.  Pull it all down, get rid of whatever has not survived the years, donate the rest to a place where those who can't afford to purchase their own decorations can have them to make their own memories.

Honey, we're using it all this year.  I don't care if we don't have the room.  Its Christmas, dammit.

The want of Things

My daily travels take me into the homes of people from different economic strata.  After those visits I often find myself having an introspective self-discussion about what I have just seen.  Recently, I visited the homes of several affluent people.

By "affluent," I don't mean the homes of people like Bill Gates or the CEO of Citigroup.  I'm talking about those I would consider to be in an economic level above mine. I'm not sure what you would specifically call it....probably because I'm not really sure where I fit into the overall scale.  As someone who is self employed, there are times I might feel flush and others when I feel that I'm not much better off than the average sales clerk at K-Mart.  Such is the nature of working for oneself.   The lives of the very top class are so out of line with most people's reality that I can't really have any meaningful discussion about them.  Their lives are dominated by numbers I can't wrap my mind around.

Meeting with people in the "next level up" is always interesting because it is easy to see myself existing in that sort of life.  IF something had been a bit different...if I had chosen a different career in a different place at perhaps a different time, it might be me.

Characteristic of the "next level up" is, of course, a larger home and perhaps a spare one somewhere else... both well appointed in more exclusive neighborhoods. With bigger homes comes more stuff.  Expensive cars, a boat, custom furniture, a fridge in every room.  Things. Gadgets. Lots of them.

My mind often goes through the motions.  "Wow...nice.  That media room would be great to have. Oh, and the Porsche... Maybe if I....... If I had only gone through with my fleeting thoughts about law school....Maybe I should have stayed with that old bat shit crazy girlfriend because her parents were loaded...."  Despite being what I consider to be a minimalist...existing with and being happy with just enough...sometimes I just WANT because I can picture how cool it might be to live in that huge house or lounge around on that boat in an expensive bathrobe without a worry about utility bills or property taxes..  Don't we all?  I know it would be cool.... until I got used to it.  Then it would just be something else I spent a lot of money on and didn't use very often.  Knowing that doesn't stop the desire.  I just try to recognize what is driving it.

What I see is what marketers portray.  Smiling people next to in-ground pools landscaped with exotic tropical greenery, ruggedly good looking men laughing with statuesque women while driving expensive, leather scented sports cars.....  People want that.  They just do.  We're taught to think products and things can make us into those smiling people.

While I'm sure there are plenty of affluent people who are extremely happy with their lives, a good many I meet don't seem to be.  Often I sense that their lives are complicated.  The money they earn and the possessions they have purchased with it have served to make things less simple.  The want of money can make us seek out a vocation not for the love of it, but for the superior levels of income it provides.  Is work fulfilling?  If it sucks, do the things purchased with the money make it all better?  Does it all create more pressure, more stress?  Some problems are completely independent of the size of our pile of stuff.  Relationship issues....problems with the kids, coworkers, lawsuits, the IRS, health issues...  Big screen TV's and a well appointed pool house can't help with any of it.

So, my question is:  Can one be truly minimalist, if one still occasionally wants?  Is true minimalism achieved only when the mind is completely unaffected by the conspicuous consumption of someone who can easily afford to do so?  I'm not talking minimalism in the completely aesthetic sense, but in an overall sense.  After all, I've seen plenty of "minimalist" flats in Architectural Digest.  A million dollar flat, glossy white, overlooking a big city with one sinuous and rather uncomfortable looking $20,000 lounger in the corner.  I'm not talking about that.

Could it be said that in some ways, is minimalism a borne out of  lack of income?  Is it a way to live a happier, lighter, less stressful life without requiring things or endless supplies of cash?  If someone is lucky enough to be born with a huge trust fund, is it less likely he/she will embrace minimalism?  I ask these questions often and never seem to have a good answer.  My guess is...minimalism is an idea that can be embraced in varying degrees.  My guess is that wanting is OK as long as we understand why and don't act on the impulses.  I am truly happy with what I have and relish the thought of enjoying my life with less junk weighing me down.  I can fantasize, can't I?  Might there be vegans who crave a steak but don't eat one?   One is no less vegan for wanting to tear into a juicy grilled Porterhouse...as long as the steak is never eaten.  And so it goes with minimalism.

I like living with less even though a fridge in every room would be pretty darn neat.

C'mon.  How could this not be great...for a little while.

Recession is over...What are you waiting for, folks?

At least that's what I'm hearing. In fact, some reports I read state that the recession has been over for more than a year. I need for the pundits who disseminate this information to ride with me for a few weeks. Opinions might change.

More and more, during my normal visits to potential clients, I am hearing stories of enormous financial distress created through job loss or catastrophic medical expenses.  The last half-dozen jobs we have been contracted to perform involve either foreclosure or business failure due to the economic downturn.

Everyone seems to desperately need money, but there's none to be found.  The recession ended when?   It hasn't ended yet if you ask me. Not according to what I see every darn day.   Even aside from business interactions, few people I speak with think that things are better. So what of these reports that we're on our way back to better days? (We are, but not yet.)

Here's my (potentially twisted) take on it.  Reports of the recession being over are designed to lead us out of our homes and back into the stores.  After all, we're all supposed to benefit from a robust and growing economy.  That only happens when we consume goods and services.  Demand for goods and services drives everything else so it is of paramount importance that those darned consumers get out there and....consume. Never mind if bank accounts are empty.   If we hear only crappy news, we go and hide.  Tell us not to worry, that things are getting better and we might just part with those few dollars we've managed to scratch together.

Well dressed economic experts tell us that we all benefit from an expanding economy. We hear reports about Wal Mart or Target's "same store sales" increasing by x percent year over year.  Economic growth and subsequent stock price growth only occurs when that number is positive.  That is, consumers must come out of their cocoons and spend more in those stores than they did last year.  Now I'm not an economist, but I don't think it is too hard to figure out that for things to always be better, we must always spend more. This year more than last, and next year more than this.  To do that we need more money. An ever increasing amount of money to go out and get more stuff....so everyone will be...better off?  Can that go on forever?

When I last checked, I thought we only had just so much money and world resources. The extra "growth" was in the form of credit. I want more but only have so much money so you just let me pay you later for the extra stuff. We bought everything this way.  Homes, cars, big screen TVs...it was all paid for with IOUs.  We did it for years.  When anyone will lend you money and you've got no skin in the game, it doesn't matter how much a home costs, does it?  No down payment?  No biggie.  Just sign here and worry about it later.   Have a nice day.  Now go shop for furniture.  I credit the Popeye character Wimpy for starting it all. "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

One day, we woke up and wondered how everyone could possibly repay the huge amounts of money on all those IOUs.  Guess what?  Here we are.  Surprise.  Don't worry though, things are getting better. The boo-boo is well on the way to healing. So get out there and start doing what you've always done. Go spend.

I challenge everyone out there..... Why does the economy always have to expand?  Why must we always spend more?   Why couldn't we be OK with what we have?  Wouldn't we all be happier if there wasn't always this underlying pressure to spend more....to have more...for things to always be bigger.

Those homes I visit where the occupants are about to be tossed out by the bank.... They're always full of stuff...tons of it. I wonder how much it all cost new. I bet sometimes it cost more than the house they're about to lose. If I remember my hierarchy of needs from school correctly, there was something in there about shelter but nothing about boats, TVs or new bedroom sets purchased on credit.

Interesting.

Don't worry.  Just sign here.  Nothing bad will happen.

The Clutter in my Virtual Attic

It was time to replace the laptop.  I looked at my nine year old Dell like one might look at an old and ailing pet. I knew the end was near for my old friend.  Surfing the web on the prehistoric monster was like watching paint dry.  I'd often punch in the URL and then go cook dinner or build something, checking occasionally to see if the site had loaded.  No one could say I didn't use things until they owed me nothing.

Time for a family meeting.  Today's topic: Replacing our outdated tech with more efficient devices while keeping our simplification goals in mind.

If there's one thing that advancing technology has provided, it is the ability to do things with smaller, more efficient devices.  Part of our simplifying goal is to get rid of (or avoid) single use gadgets.  If we can replace three items (economically) with one, we give it serious consideration.  This concept is like candy to an electronics loving sugar hound.  I inherited my love of the newest beeping, flashing gizmos from my dad who surprisingly, despite nearing 70 is the go-to guy in the family when anyone is thinking about a purchase that involves a battery or something wireless.  I'd bet money that if we dropped my long deceased grandfather into the 21st century, we'd discover that he had the same affliction.

Despite my disdain for frivolous consumerism, I've been known to be a complete hypocrite when a new electronic gadget is involved.  At least I'm not impulsive.  I typically won't buy anything without exhaustive research and deliberation beforehand.  There are plenty of very chic devices out there, but I'm not convinced that they all have practical value.  Some seem destined to be quickly outdated (relatively speaking, since everything is quickly outdated nowadays) or are simply too expensive for what they do.

With the laptop decision looming, it was time to get my mind into gear.  How could we scale back and sell multiple items which we could then replace with one item.  As I pondered the possibilities in my office, I took note of the train wreck on my desk.  I had a full size desktop with a gigantic flat panel monitor.  A twisted, spaghetti-like mass of cables snaked about in front of me.  Did I need all of this?  Did my monitor need to be so huge?  (I only ended up with it because....it was at one of our auctions.)  Could a new laptop replace all of this volume and perform the same, if not better functions?  The desktop wasn't old, so I could probably sell it and offset much of the cost of the new laptop.  Time to get dad on the phone.

After multiple conversations about processor speeds and hard drive capacities, it was decided that the desktop should go.  With that decision made, I turned to scrutinize the other devices in our home.  We had an old video game system that could be sold since our daughter now had a late generation iPod that played hundreds of games.  Likewise with the portable DVD player since she could also play video on her cassette -sized device.  Now we were getting somewhere.  We were going to ditch the desktop, the older laptop, the portable DVD player and the game system.  Incoming would be one newer laptop.  A huge net gain in simplicity.  What I didn't realize is that I'd have to go through a whole new purging process to make all of this happen.  I'm not talking about the physical items that we were parting with.  That was easy.  More difficult was that  I now had to deal with all the data on my desktop computer.

Although my desktop was only a couple of years old, when I bought it I had the computer tech transfer my old files from my clunker over to the new system.  I never gave a second thought to what might have accumulated in that dark closet known as the the hard drive.  With this decision to downsize, I felt it might be time to sift through the data accumulation and ready the recycle bin.  I had no idea what I was in for.

It turns out that I had some sort of parallel life on my hard drive.  A life that looks like a hoarders house, only in cyberspace.  That life takes up no physical room so it's easy to overlook it during the simplification process, but man.....it was there.  Years and years of accumulated data, documents, saved webpages, bookmarks, photos...you name it.  I had just climbed into one of those attics that fills me with dread every time I poke my head into the scuttle and see the piles and piles of junk.  My own virtual attic from hell.  I needed to fuel up for this one.

After a good hearty dinner, I plopped myself down in front of my over sized monitor and clicked "Explore."  It was a mess.  Random files and folders everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of documents from years gone by.  Folders in folders inside more folders.  I needed a glass of wine. 

To look at every file and make a decision would take a lifetime, so I decided on a rule that works in our physical household...With the obvious exception of family pictures, if it is more than a year old and hasn't been utilized, it goes.  Great thing about computers today....all you do is mouse over the file and it tells you when it was last opened.  Turns out I had crap in there that was 7, 8 even 9 years old.  I practically wore out the delete button in four hours.  In many cases, entire overstuffed folders were ditched.  Nearly half my hard drive ended up in the recycle bin.  Old business letters, recipes we sent to friends, screen shots of long defunct websites, photos of items we posted on eBay...all into the virtual dumpster.  It was almost as good as sex.  Almost.

NOW....I'm ready for the new laptop.  What I discovered is that clutter in our lives can extend well beyond the physical items, but into the virtual world and from there into the psychological world.  Starting with the physical items will naturally lead us through the other layers that are not so obvious.  The desired result being that we eventually free ourselves from the clutter in our minds.

This is what my hard drive looked like.

Godzilla's Bed

That's what I moved today.

It nearly claimed two of us.  Under normal circumstances one might think that a queen sized bed with no mattress or box spring, disassembled into headboard and footboard wouldn't be much of a problem to move.  After all, we've been moving these sorts of things for about a decade.  Today was a first though.  I witnessed and moved the heaviest bed on the planet.  Compared to this thing, a Volkswagen would have been a breeze.

The four posts were about the thickness of the average telephone pole and were too tall to go through the door.  This meant the whole thing had to be turned on its side and scootched out the door.  We couldn't hold it up by the posts, since they were so long and had carved areas that were narrow.  This would have surely  caused the posts to snap off under their own weight.  In the end we used slings and some rather contorted methods of support.  As my lumbar region creaked and groaned I wondered to myself between short gasps of breath, why anyone would need a bed of such massive proportions.  If Atlas needed a bed for a nocturnal romp with Mrs. Atlas, this one would have done nicely.  But the owners were normal human beings.  If any part of it fell on the occupant(s) during the night, death would surely result instantly.

As the hulking monstrosity inched its way toward the front door, I digressed.  What a waste using four entire trees for a bed whose only purpose is to adorn the mattress.    Worse yet, it wasn't even pretty.  The style was a grotesque combination of Eastlake Victorian meets Native American Totem Pole.  Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to manufacture it and even then I'm sure several designers had to give it the thumbs up before it actually went into production.  From there, retailers had to like it enough to order it and consumers had to go bat shit over it enough to buy it.  I'm afraid to know what it cost new.  In any case, there must be a lot of people that think it is attractive.  Then again, lots of things are attractive at 1:45 AM in a dive bar according to the patrons.

This is how far we've come.  Are people actually proud to show other people this sort of thing?  "I don't mean to boast, but this bed resulted in a lumber shortage that affected three states.  Pretty cool, huh?"  No.

It's a bed.

Follow Up:  Apparently someone liked it enough to shell out several hundred dollars for it and then drag it out of the gallery.  Oh.....and for what it's worth, I'm an idiot.  When we set up the bed in the gallery, I told the colorful story of its transport to one of our longtime "ringmen."  His immediate response was "Why didn't you just unscrew the tall posts from the headboard and footboard?"  I told him I didn't see any way to remove them since the junction where the posts met the headboard and footboard were solid.  I mentioned I'd be happy for him to prove me wrong.  Well, he did....in about 45 seconds.  Six inches above the solid junction, the posts unscrewed.  Just call me "mud."  And to think of all those expletives I wasted...

Now this would have been far more entertaining to move.