I Need A Bigger Shredder

Call me paranoid.  If something comes into my house with my name and address on it, it goes out a la James Frey -- in a million little pieces.  So imagine my delight while purging the laundry room when I finally got to....THE FILING CABINET.  In some aspects of my life I've been a pretty organized person.  Like when it came to paperwork.  You know -- hydro bills, vet reports, financial statements -- everything that keeps my household running like the well oiled machine that it is.  I labelled file folders.  I punched holes.  I used those little metal sliding fastener things to keep everything neat and tidy.  And for years...I didn't throw anything out.  I do now, but the filing cabinet predates the newer, smarter me.

Now here I sit, the history of my household being fed into my little desktop shredder one slow page at a time.  Necessary?  Maybe not.  Paranoid?  Definitely.  But no one is getting their hands on the receipt from my septic tank clean out in 1998.  No one.

Shameful

According to recent news reports, Canada produces more garbage per person than any of the other 16 developed economies in the study.  At 777 kg per person, that's a whopping 200 kg more than the average.  And that's just shameful.

I'm very cognizant of the numbers as I continue the great purging of my house.  I'm recycling as much of the stuff as I can, donating it where it's applicable, but the bottom line is that it will ultimately end up as garbage one day.  I am still disposing of the styrofoam packaging that came with the new appliances I bought last May.  In my neck of the woods there is no way to recycle styrofoam.  I've only recently heard of a pilot project in the lower mainland of B.C. that is attempting to do this.  But that's one area of a vast province.  No one in my small Island community is shipping our styrofoam over there.

This reignites in me not only the commitment to consume less but also to consider the packaging when making a purchase.  I realize I have little control over how goods are packaged other than not buying them, but sometimes that's just not an option.

I could go on and on (don't even get me started on the built in obsolescence of technology) but that's my little rant for the day.  If I was to rant more, this is what I wish I could say:

http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/

Watch this.  It's 20 minutes long but 20 highly informative, entertaining minutes.  I'll be keeping this in mind the next time I go to the store.

Need vs Want

Other than to buy groceries or the necessities of life, like toilet paper and printer ink, I don't go into many stores in January.  Part of it has to do with being turned off by the total excess of the holiday season.  The other part is that there are no malls where I live and it's an hour drive to the closest one. Sometimes that's a good thing.  Like now.  Really cuts down on the shopping for the sake of shopping. You know, the shopping that you do to give yourself that little dopamine lift.  You don't need the kick-ass little red shoes, but it feels so damn good buying them.

But I've been faced with my first "do I need this or do I want this?" decision of my new year's resolution.  Bird seed.  The big bags.  For the outside birds, as I call them.  I have to differentiate as I have inside birds too.  I love birds.  I love to watch birds.  I have been known to sit on my deck for hours on a beautiful summer evening with a glass of wine, doing nothing more than watching the birds at the feeders.  To date I've identified some thirty to forty species in my yard alone.

So it begs the question:  Do I need to buy seeds to feed the birds or do I want to buy seeds to feed the birds?  And sometimes it's not a simple matter of need vs want.  Sometimes the line between the two blurs.  But when faced with this sort of blurry decision I turn to my favourite piece of poetry, written in the 12th century by Persian poet Moslih Eddin Saadi...

                                     If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft

                                     And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left

                                     Sell one, and with the dole

                                     Buy hyacinths to feed they soul.

Bottom line -- feeding the birds is something I do for my soul.  And I need that.  In the long run, the feeling I get watching the birds lasts way longer than the little red shoes.

On another note...I first heard this piece of poetry on an episode of The Mod Squad.  That iconic early 70's show of which I was a faithful viewer.  Of course I only remembered a small snippet at the time, but I was so enamoured of it that I went to my local library to try to look it up.  Now given that this was pre-internet days, I consider it quite a feat that I managed to find it using reference books. But it has stayed with me ever since.  Hmm...maybe watching The Mod Squad wasn't a total waste of time after all.  

My Arch Nemesis

We all have something that we have a hard time throwing out.  (We do, don't we?)  For me, one of those somethings is magazines.  Just can't make myself toss them into the blue bin when I'm finished reading...okay, IF I finish reading.  And so they stack up.  And up and Up and UP.  Most are relegated to the "desk" (aka "that flat storage space where things go to die") in the laundry room.  I've got everything from news to health to gardening to Oprah.  Now there's a big fat beautiful glossy magazine.  How do you throw Oprah into the bin?

But -- new year, new me, new policy.  They're out of here.  All 252 of them dating back to 1998.  Yes, I counted as I sorted and I didn't open a single one.  Not even a peek.  Even I realize that if I haven't needed the little tidbits in them since 1998, I can surely do without them in 2013.

Oh, and then there are some in my bedroom:  two neatly stacked piles of writing magazines that I still subscribe to -- Writer's Digest in one pile, The Writer in the other.  One hundred and twenty seven of them, chronologically arranged dating back to 2005.  I sat for a while contemplating those piles and came to the realization that the business of writing is ever changing and some material can soon become outdated.  I made a deal with myself -- I can keep the ones I haven't read and the rest had to go.  'Cause see, there's the thing:  reading magazines takes up a lot of valuable reading time and basically I've stopped reading them.  Sure they're great for the plane or the beach, but I just don't want to invest that much time into them anymore.

And in the spirit of stuff out, no more stuff in....I won't be be renewing my subscriptions when they expire this year.  Except for one.  (You know the "there's an exception to every rule" rule.)  I subscribe to a small literary magazine called The First Line that publishes four times a year.  They are a small independent press that published my first ever in print story and I want to continue to support them.

This is a big step for me.  Especially the writing mags.  But the way I figure it, if I really want to know something, there's this new thing called the Internet.  Saves a few tress and it takes up way less space on my desk.  



   

One Down...

There are three complete sets of golf clubs in bags and two pull carts in my workshop.  There is even the bag to put the golf bag in to put it on an airplane.  Two people live in my house, me and my 18 year old daughter.  Neither of us golfs.  Do you sense where I'm going with this?

The workshop purge was my first attempt at totally clearing out.  And I went for it.  No matter how useful an item was or how good the condition it was in, if I hadn't used / needed / or even knew it was in the house for the past 20 years, it was going.  So...three boxes of books to the Arts Council annual book sale; two garbage bags and 2 boxes of assorted clothes and items to the Diabetes Clothesline program; assorted tools and rolls of electrical wire to my neighbour; thirty plus cans of paint to the recycler; two very full, very heavy bags of garbage.  And the beginning of a pile for a dump run.

What's left?  A goalie hockey bag the size of a small bus.  Bike helmets, tennis racquets, squash racquets, racquet ball racquets.  Wet suits and snorkeling gear.  Hockey sticks, cross country skis and fishing rods.  Tools, painting equipment and nails.  Lots of nails.  And a surfboard.

I can see the floor.  I can use the entire work bench.  It feels incredible.  

As for the golf clubs...well, they're hanging on the wall.  Maybe I'll take up golf one of these days, and if I do, well....I can invite a friend....or two.

On another note...I love books.  Reading is probably my number one passion.  I used to want to have a room in my house with an entire wall of books...hell, make it four walls.  Guess that’s why I was drawn to the background I chose for this blog.  But books take up a ton of space.  I no longer want the in-home library and collect only a very few of my favourite authors.  But books are the subject of my second personal new year’s challenge.  In 2012 I read 56 books, not quite matching my personal best of 59 in 2010.  This year I’m aiming for 60.  Yes, I keep lists and write them down.  As of today (Jan 6) I have finished book #1 -- Off the Road:  A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim’s Route into Spain by Jack Hitt.  Anyone care to join me?  The prize is personal fulfillment and time well spent.    

Where To Start

Sometimes, when the stuff I have to do is overwhelming and I don't know where to start, I do the only logical thing -- grab a coffee and a book and avoid it all.  But not this time.  I know just where I'm heading with my shovel and garbage bags.  The workshop:  dumping ground for all things that have reached the status of "what the hell do I do with this now?"  Those things too good to throw out because you just might need them one day.  A lot of things in my house get assigned that status.

I compounded the problem in early December by moving my stained glass studio from my unheated shop in the garage into the workshop.  Rather than taking the time to clean it up then, I just shoved things aside on the workbench to make enough room to work.  So now, in addition to the usual assortment of tools and nails and plant pots and deflated sports balls and ancient toys, I also have glass to clean up.  Lots of little sharp shards of glass.  What was I thinking?

The workshop is the one room in the house that literally has one path in and one path out.  Thanks at least to my December glass projects I can now reach the workbench, but one never knows what is lurking around that pile of boxes...or hiding next to the toolbox...or leering over the hockey bag.  But I have my shovel and I'm going in.  If I'm not back in a few days, send a search party.  Don't forget the bread crumbs.

The Same....Only Better

Do you make New Year's resolutions?  I do.  Every year.  Do I keep them?  Have you seen me lately?  Do I look like a size 6?  But I love the start of a new year -- it's like a blank page waiting to be written on.  The promise and possibilities are limitless.

So raise your hand if you've ever made a New Year's resolution to organize your house?  Yup...it's right up there with lose weight and get fit.  Now raise your hand if said New Year's resolution came to a crashing halt after you tossed a couple of old sweaters and straightened up the linen closet.  Thought so.  Me too.  But this year's going to be different.  No, really...it is.  I spent December feeling mildly frustrated.  While everything about the season is based on stuffing the turkey and stuffing the stockings and stuffing the presents under the tree, all I could think about was "destuffing" the house.  The breaking point came when I thought I broke my toe kicking something that had been relegated to the floor for lack of anywhere else to put it.  After uttering a long, loud string of expletives, I sat there with my bag of frozen peas on my foot and thought, "something's got to give."

And that something is all the stuff.  I'm getting drastic this year.  Not just organizing the stuff but clearing it out.  And not just clearing it out.  Not letting it in the door in the first place.  My new mantra is going to be "Do I need this or do I just want this" and it's going to be applied to every single purchase this year.  Mind you, I'm not going minimalist.  I've been reading some of those blogs and websites and some of those guys are extreme to the max.  I'm going for the happy medium.

But why the blog?  Accountability, that's why.  Resolve to yourself to do something and quitting is easy.  But put it out there and it's not so easy to cave.  I learned this over the course of 2012.  My friend, Katrina and I had a year long weight loss challenge.  Every month she posted our results on her blog.  Let me tell you, every time I thought, "screw this", my next thought was, "damn, it's going on her blog."  So here I am...being accountable.

On another note...So far the hardest thing I've found about starting this blog was coming up with the title.  I really wanted something about stuff, but everything I came up with was taken -- Too Much Stuff; No More Stuff; Enough With the Stuff; It's Just Stuff...  Hell, even Every Day Is Garbage Day was taken.  Oh, and let me clear up one possible misconception about my title -- I don't have to tunnel through ceiling high boxes of stuff to get from one room to the other.  Really...I don't.