Retaining vs letting go (or how stuff is not just stuff)

The other day M suddenly decided to tackle our dreaded home office closet, which is full to the brink and a little scary. Soon enough though he wasn’t "cleaning" as much as he was bringing me every single thing he found in there and commenting on it: "Look, the poster we bought together that day in Arizona… Great day, wasn’t it? Sadly we never took care of it and it’s all crushed and useless now." "Ooooh, look at that old wool coat. I don't even remember where it comes from..." "Incredible. We have no less than 3 old computer cases in there...", etc.

And this made me reflect on the fundamental difference between the two of us, one that has sometimes been a source of conflict, but is mostly an endless topic of adaptation and compromise in the life we share together. He’s a keeper. I’m a throw-outer.

He has a hard time letting go of things, and this clearly has to do more with the thoughts, feelings, ideas, and memories they convey than with the objects themselves. His parents still live where he grew up, and could potentially open an antique store with everything they’ve accumulated over the years. Wandering into their basement is a little like Ali Baba's cave, and is guaranteed to lead to all kinds of cool finds. Whereas, I moved about 25 times, and my parents liked nice things but never really had a sense of keeping and/or transmitting them. Somewhere along the line of repeatedly having to part with stuff I liked I realized that I could really do OK with not much, began being a little wary of the physical and especially mental clutter associated with things, and developed a deep sense of satisfaction when I was able to get rid of it/control it.

Different upbringings, different results: my husband is comforted by the thought of holding on to things. I am comforted by the thought of holding on to as few things as possible.

There’s a wonderful side to this sort of hoarding: M brought me to the amazing world of collecting vintage objects, a hobby we both love, and has a very strong sense of "heritage," which lives on in our house through all these meaningful objects from his family history (we started collecting citrus reamers after he inherited the one he remembers his grandmother making him juice with, etc.), for our children and their children to enjoy. LP plays with toys that once belonged to M and even to his father, and I find this simply amazing.

In comparison, I have very few things from my childhood, or even my family. When my parents divorced and sold the house they just got rid of basically everything, including some possessions that broke my heart: a 75 year-old, complete collection of National Geographic magazines given to me by this family I was babysitting for, and my 100 year-old, San Francisco-made piano (a few years after that I went to someone’s house to work on a group project at school, and felt my heart sink when upon entering their hallway I came face to face with it. Sigh). Similarly, about ten years ago, I visited a cousin’s apartment and it suddenly felt I had entered back into my childhood: she had somehow ended up with a lot of the furniture my parents used to have, probably via her mother’s basement when my parents traded up and gave away their earlier set. It was good design and had aged well, and at this point I was more aware of these things and would have given everything to have these.

But there’s also a less fantastic side to the keeper tendency: for instance M refusing to throw away a whole pile of his t-shirts from high school (which he graduated from two decades ago). Or his Doc Martens from the same period ("I swear I'll wear them again!"). Or all the notes he scribbled in law school. Or all these slightly creepy action figures he continued collecting well into his twenties. Or these hundreds of dusty CDs, despite not having listened to any one of them for at least ten years. OK, you get my drift.

Meanwhile, I drive him crazy with my tendency to dispose of stuff, often too hurriedly according to him. I will admit that I occasionally lost some pieces of paper we needed because of one of my clutter-clearing binges, but other than that I argue that 95% of what we get rid of will never be needed again, and that I’m okay with paying to get back the other 5% as a trade-off for a clear space and a clear mind.

I hate clutter, but over the years have come to tolerate it. There’s not much of a choice with a partner who doesn’t view this as supremely important, and especially with a child. Children know just how to wreck your lovely, peaceful order and make incredible messes EVERYWHERE in the house (messes unlike any other you’ve ever seen). And the only thing to do is to embrace it, without letting it take over; it’s a sign that happy, carefree play is occurring in the house, that a family truly lives there and that it’s a warm and comforting, not sterile, environment. But I think we all can learn from each other: hopefully in time LP will learn to keep things tidier, and I can learn to relax a little even as dozens of little toy cars are spread out on the floor. I’ve already been sold on the value of keepsakes and objects permeating through the generations. And maybe a certain someone could realize that not *everything* is worth keeping?