We are living in a Material World (and trying to live guilt free)

Note: I have had this in my drafts folder for a month or so now and with need for blog fodder for NaBloPoMo I am taking it out of the files and dusting it off and giving it a polishing update. Maybe it should be chapter one of NaNoWriMo.

I do not consider myself a material person. I like things, certain things and I like certain things the way I like them. We all do. We all have our likes, dislikes, styles, desires for things to be a certain way, color, or design. I am not a high maintenance person. I know what I like and what I do not like. Of the things in my life I have many more of the things I do not like, than of things I do like. Why? It is not by choice. Or is it? I do not know, but I have been working very hard on de-cluttering my life for a while now and that de-cluttering involves my thoughts as well as the things around me. These thoughts have flickered on and off in my head for the past few years now and in recently have been weighing heavier and heavier on my mind because of situations in my life. You need a little history to understand where I am coming from with all of this so bare with me and I will be as brief as possible and touch the important factors only.

I grew up in a house with a father who kept just about everything. If an item came in a box, then the box had to be kept as long as the item was around. You know, just in case. Keep the box, keep the packaging, keep the receipts, keep the bag from the store. Yes, keeping certain things is good, but this can go overboard easily. With all of this kind of thinking around me I did not realize that I was being taught to collect clutter.

I grew up being taught that company, the guests in our house, come first. I do not have a problem with that. The idea is that we are to make our guests feel special. We clean our house extra nice for company (you know, when we know they are coming) and we cook up special meals for them to eat. We make sure the special sheets are on the guest bed, and that the pretty towels are hanging in the bathroom. As a child I was taught that my guest got to choose what game we played, guest always go first (even if the rules say the highest role goes first). The guest is special, let the guest make all the decisions. As a child, I learned the hard way over and over and over again, that even if the guest hit me or was mean to me, the guest was always right. But what always confused me as a child was when I was the guest my parents always made sure I knew the “You are a Guest” Rules, as I call them. I was told before going to a friends house: “Now don’t get in the way. Be nice. Let your host go first to show you what to do. Let your host make the choices because it is their house and their games and their _____ (fill in the blank).” You get the picture, right? My parents taught me a lot about their view of me by these actions. At a young age I began having a poor image of myself, my thoughts, my likes, my dislikes, my wants, my dreams, my desires, my anything. I did not know what to think of myself except poorly when I was taught that there was nothing special about me to make anything important enough for me to be first or special.

I gained a very unhealthy view of myself and my worth and one day a light bulb came on in my head thanks to a good friend who saw what was happening. But a great deal of damage was already done. Much of which I will not get into because it is not relevant to my point here today. My biggest struggle was learning to speak up for myself. Learning that what I like and do not like (be it colors, flavors, clothes) is just fine. We are all different and I thank God for that. How boring life would be if we were all the same. But I struggled for years to accept the fact that while I was a broken individual who needed Christ I wasn’t broken in the sense of my creative created being. God made me who I am. He knit me in my mother’s womb, placing in me the parts that made me who I am: I like green. I like Jamoca Almond Fudge ice cream. I like wearing blue jeans. I like Sonic cherry Coke. I like vanilla syrup in my coffee. Just because I like green does not make it wrong when my friend likes blue. I do not get my feelings hurt if someone likes something I do not, just as others do not get their feelings hurt if I like something they do not like. If I like something and you say, “That is ugly” it will hurt my feelings a little (it used to hurt a lot) because it felt like an attack. If I like something and you say, “I do not like that” or “I think that is ugly” it does not hurt my feelings. Why? Because the first is stated more of a fact instead of an opinion. We are all different and we all like different things. If I am wearing something that is not flattering, do not tell me I am ugly. Tell me the outfit is not flattering. See, it is the words that matter. For most people this is nothing, but for me it means more, maybe than it should.

This clutter and keeping of things I don’t currently use is swallowed up by the pressure not to spend money on it again if I get rid of it now. What if I need it later. We don’t make enough money to buy it again later if I get rid of it now just because I am not using it right now.

What does all this mean to my point of de-cluttering? What this means is that at 38 I am still finding my voice. Looking for the balance of when to speak up and when to let it go. Some things are bigger than others. Some things just annoy me, some things I have to decide whether to live with them or not.

Back to the de-cluttering. Yes, that really is what all this is about. A few years ago I “discovered” the FlyLady. I was almost in love. I liked so much of what she said about de-cluttering the stuff from our homes. I had tried for years to get my family to understand that I wanted the stacks of stuff to be gone; my kitchen counters are for cooking, not stacking junk that should go in the trash or never come in the house to begin with. I love so many of her de-cluttering rules:

What to declutter? Things to ask yourself as you get rid of your clutter:

• Do I love this item?
• Have I used it in the past year?
• Is it really garbage?
• Do I have another one that is better?
• Should I really keep two?
• Does it have sentimental value that causes me to love it?
• Or does it give me guilt and make me sad when I see the item?

Cleanse this room of everything that does not make you SMILE.

Some things about her total system just don’t work for me. But I weaned things from it that did work and while I can do most of those things I still can not get my family to take part. This means there is still a lot of clutter. I came across the Joys system about two years ago and on that site it has some helpful hints for getting your life de-clutterd and staying de-cluttered:

The Secret to Control Your Clutter.
USE It, NEED It or TOSS It, Unless It Makes You Smile.
That’s it. USE it, NEED it or TOSS it, unless it makes you smile is the secret to clutter control. It’s JOYS thinking.

Do you see the similarities? If you search for other systems and read through books to help you get that momentum, they all say that same basic point: does it make you smile?

Now I have kept a lot of things in my life that I wish I do not have around because I have been more afraid of hurting someone’s feeling for not keeping an item than for getting rid of it as it sits unused and takes up space. For example: a birthday present that didn’t fit, but was gifted from somewhere that I can not exchange it. So there it hangs in the closet, unworn. Or a piece of costume jewelry that I don’t like and would never wear, but feel guilty for not wearing and there it sits taking up room on my dresser or in my drawer. I want to get rid of these things. I want to get them out of my house. I fell guilty for even thinking about getting rid of a gift. I don’t know why I do this. I don’t wear it. I don’t use it. I don’t like it. It is not ugly in my opinion, it just isn’t something I want to wear. It doesn’t even make me smile just because who may have given it to me. So why do I keep it?

Then there are the items that are given to us that are expected to be seen when the gift-giver comes by for a visit. So and so gave me a _____. I do not like that _____. I do not want to keep that _____. But I know the gift-giver would be terrible hurt if I did not keep that ____ and have out when they come to visit. So what to do, because I really don’t even want to put it out at all. And I really wish I could show you a picture of it, but I must refrain.

Then there are the larger situations of de-cluttering. What to do when we feel forced to use something we don’t like and can’t (financially) replace if we get rid of it. But there it sits, the big elephant in the middle of the room reminding me of the yuck that it represents. For example, I would be perfectly fine living without a couch. The couch is too small. The couch is not comfortable. The couch, I did not want, but now have. The couch I was not given a choice about. I want the couch we had before we moved. I want the couch we had that was bigger. I want the couch that was more comfortable. I want the couch that I could clean. I want the couch that we had to leave in Hattiesburg. Every time I look at the couch we have now I think about the situation that brought this couch to us. I think about all the cheap attitudes and the fact that my couch wouldn’t fit on the truck because we had to move ourselves. I think about the fact that I had to leave a lot of stuff behind that I need and used and liked. I think about the the things I can not replace that I had to leave behind. All of that and more because of a stupid couch. It is what it represents to me. I know it is just a couch. I tell myself this. It is a material thing. It has no feelings. It has no brain. It does not matter. But what if was my grandmother’s silver and it was stolen? Then the opposite takes hold. It was just silver, but it had sentimental meaning and the loss of it hurts, just as having it brought joy. As humans we do this, we assign seemingly limitless value, worth, thought, and feelings to the representation of objects that truly have none of their own.

So my dear Readers and NaBloPoMo visitors, what do you do in these situations? What do you do with those gifts that don’t fit and you can’t return? What do you do with those gifts you don’t want to keep but guilt makes you think you need to? When do you speak up and when do you shut up? What do you do with those elephants in the room?