Thursday, December 29, 2011

A week's insanity....

Some weeks are a firm reminder of why I chose to live with only a little....My job is to help people.  It is a job I enjoy greatly but in many cases, there is little I can do.

Monday: I visit a large storage unit loaded with items of absolutely no market value...mildewed clothes, rusted pots and pans, broken furniture, Tupperware with no lids.  This is one of four units that have nearly the same items.  Gentleman had claimed "there are some really good things in there".... We check...not a chance.  I recommend a bobcat and a dumpster.  Four units times about the five years each has been a trash receptacle.  That's a lot of rent...get out your calculator...

Tuesday: Visit a home whose interior defies description. My guess is that living conditions are far better in distant third world countries during a famine or infectious disease outbreak.  I can't see the floor... it is covered with an odd conglomeration of old food, clothing, cat hair and ten thousand personal items.  I see half a laptop, about a half dozen remotes, a chair leg....Anything that was of value has been used as a scratching post, a chew toy or is stained or broken.  Looks like a year's worth of frat parties occurred and nobody bothered to clean up after each.....there's nothing salvageable of the five or so items they WANTED to sell.  The seller's felt the other 9,995 items should be scraped off the floor, boxed and transported to their new home because they might need them....Sigh.

Thursday: Visit to a hoarder extraordinaire... A woman who has kept everything she ever bought for the last two decades.  She is aware she has a problem, but seems powerless to rein it in.  Just last week she spent over $3,000 on QVC.  She has three large outbuildings filled with items, many of them never removed from the packaging.  I have to explain that she has grossly overpaid for all the items and there is no hope she can recover an amount even close to the price she paid despite the claims on TV that these items are of "heirloom quality."  Just not on this planet.  She stares at me blankly.  She doesn't understand why this is or that she has fallen victim to the band of thieves that hawk garbage on TV that can be purchased with only four easy payments plus processing and handling.

This is our culture....we are taught that the acquisition of things defines us, makes us worthy.  In the end, it is acquisition that weighs us down and wastes our time and resources.  I come home, still sneezing from cat dander and decades old dust and collapse on the sofa feeling utterly defeated.  The "stuff" has won this week.  It has silently infiltrated our homes and wedged itself firmly in our closets and outbuildings like some unseen squatter.  It is not easily dislodged.  Maybe next week.

Yup...For most people it doesn't look like this.  There's an abundance of CRAP out there...

Thursday, December 8, 2011

The "Season."

Ah yes....that season is upon us again.

I started seeing the first Christmas sale hints not long after Labor Day....the sun was shining and if I can recall correctly, I may have been at the beach.

Fortunately, the business of ridding people of things has kept me busy enough to ignore the procession of invented holidays....Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Dollar Taco Tuesday....oh, wait, not that last one.  Facebook posts proclaim..."Only 16 more presents and I'll be done with Christmas shopping."  Funny how folks appear to want that process to end...sort of like cancer treatments.  I've listened to acquaintances lament about how they are dreading spending the holidays with mom, dad and all the belligerent cousins.  Christmas has, in many ways,  become a necessary evil that comes once a year...followed closely by the filing of income taxes.

Yes...Tis the sea-son for re-gift-ing....fa la la la la.... The season of family...giving....of waiting out in the cold at 1AM in front of a big box store.

This year...the statistics are in.  Consumers have spent a record amount on gifts.  More stuff for me to sell I guess.

As I watch the cars line up at the mall entrance, I'm content knowing that my family knows me now.  They don't ask what I want this year.  They know better.  My sister, also a minimalist to some degree has made a pact with me.  We will not exchange gifts.  Our gift to each other this year has been the new places we experienced together.  That's enough for me.  That makes me happy.  Thanks....I have everything I need.

I DO remember the warm feelings associated with Christmas as a kid.  Of course there were wrapped toys....but those were the days before I gave up the childhood practice of wanting everything that looked colorful or fun.  I can't remember what I received but I do remember staying up past my schoolnight bedtime to watch Charlie Brown, Frosty and my hour-long favorite that included colorful characters like Yukon Cornelius and an elf named Herbie who wanted to be a dentist.  I remember mom baking cookies, stringing up miniature lights and the smell of NYC pretzels and chestnuts at the big tree in Rockefeller Center.  The things I received were incidental (not at the time...but I realize they are now.)  It was the experiences that were important.  The smells, sights and tastes ...I remember vividly.  The things...I do not.

Next up...New Years resolutions!  Can I make it past January 15th?

Funny how the original caption of this picture mentioned Christmas shopping being stressful.
Holiday shopping....Meh...