In my life there are two distinct types of clutter:
- Physical clutter as defined above, and
- Mental clutter- what my monkey brain is doing 24/7. We will not be "cluttering" this blog with mental clutter. This is best left in the hands of professionals as after all we need not add to the already high unemployment figures with high priced professionals.
This subject matter is so vast that it will take two blog postings to discuss. The first posting (the one you are reading) introduces the story of clutter in my life starting with the growth and takes you through the accumulation of stuff. The second blog discusses the realization that something had to be done with all this stuff and how I managed to gain control...sort of!
Clutter seeped into my life about twenty years ago when we bought a summer home in Kittery Point, Maine. We started to duplicate items that we deemed essential to life that we already owned, but were in New York. Also, we now had additional space to fill up; called a basement.
Lordy, that was like being a kid in a candy store with jingle in our jeans. Jane understood the difference between a "want" and "need." More than can be said about me!
While what I am about to describe does not come close to the legendary cluuter created by the infamous Collyer Brothers in New York City, but it does show how easy it is to add stuff to one's life.
Two educated brothers, Homer and Langley Collyer, lived in Harlem at the beginning of the 1900s and soon their house would have 180 tons of garbage, much of it newspapers, in it.The main impetus to save was when Homer went blind, and Langley, while taking care of him (like feeding him oranges for his sight), saved newspapers for him, adding to a collection that included 10 pianos, a disassembled car (or two) and a dozen gas chandeliers among other things.
The Collyer Brothers only serve as background information as the clutter I managed to create till now is just a speck of dust in their collection.
At the time, we did not know that we would shortly buy a second house in Kittery Point (KP). This house would be a training ground for me in the art of collecting and storing in what would become my house of clutter. The original home in KP was a time for Jane to do the research and start writing her dissertation. No sooner did we get the house in shape, we made the decision to move to a larger space and while keeping our apartment in Manhattan spend more time in Kittery Point. We found a lovely Cape style home overlooking Pepperrrell Cove. While it was too small for our needs, we set about a massive renovation. The results of which was ample room to expand and expand we did.
There are three areas of interest that cried out for attention. They are:
The Collyer Brothers only serve as background information as the clutter I managed to create till now is just a speck of dust in their collection.
At the time, we did not know that we would shortly buy a second house in Kittery Point (KP). This house would be a training ground for me in the art of collecting and storing in what would become my house of clutter. The original home in KP was a time for Jane to do the research and start writing her dissertation. No sooner did we get the house in shape, we made the decision to move to a larger space and while keeping our apartment in Manhattan spend more time in Kittery Point. We found a lovely Cape style home overlooking Pepperrrell Cove. While it was too small for our needs, we set about a massive renovation. The results of which was ample room to expand and expand we did.
There are three areas of interest that cried out for attention. They are:
- Books- both fiction (concentration on crime and espionage) and non-fiction (history and social justice issues)
- Music- (Classical, Jazz, Folk, Folk-Rock, Sinatra and friends (Peggy Lee, Doris Day, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin and a whole gaggle of others), and Country/rock ala Travis Tritt and Johnny Cash.
- Movies and old time radio- all the classics
I made a connection with the Kittery Library and soon became instrumental in their selection of espionage and mystery books for their collection. I was a subscriber to Publisher's weekly (PW) and therefor had advanced knowledge of the new books. This did not add to clutter, but I went one step further.
I have a friend, Charlie, of well over 30 years and never knew that he was a voracious reader and liked the same types of books as I did. In addition, he liked to buy books. I was like a pig (in you know what) a dream had come true.
You guessed it! In no time at all, I sent my PW to him; he ordered and read the books and sent to me. The problem I had was that the library kept getting books and Charlie kept sending books. The shelves started to fill up and expanded to other nooks and crannies. Books started to show up in the most unlikely spots.
Before things turned critical, we moved into much larger quarters in Mystic, CT. Since this was a new construction, we were able to customize the house to fill our needs. That meant oodles of bookshelves scattered throughout the living and office space. Or at least what we thought would be ample for our needs.
"What fools we mortals be."
In no time at all, I had managed to fill the shelves and was back in the same predicament. Adding to my woes was a change in Charlie's distribution pattern and his having more time to read. Books started to flow north from Florida that in no time at all, the "empty" shelves began to groan under the weight of Charlies' books, library books, and sundry other forms of media.
When this overflow ended up on my bedside table, a voice from the other side of the room cried out that "enough is enough". A quick consultation with my Southern friend developed a plan reminiscent of the Marshall Plan that saved Europe after WW11. We enlisted my sister, Bobbie, who lived near Charlie, into the distribution pattern. The books now made a complete circle back to Charlie where he filled up his new bookshelves.
This worked well until we decided it was time to return to our real home in New York City. Our problem now would be what we were going to do with all the stuff we had accumulated in the past 16 years.
I think this is as good a place to take leave of this first installment of my battle with clutter. For those of you "mature" (old) enough to remember when the movies were proceeded with the Saturday's serials, I invite you to be patient and learn the answers to the following questions:
When this overflow ended up on my bedside table, a voice from the other side of the room cried out that "enough is enough". A quick consultation with my Southern friend developed a plan reminiscent of the Marshall Plan that saved Europe after WW11. We enlisted my sister, Bobbie, who lived near Charlie, into the distribution pattern. The books now made a complete circle back to Charlie where he filled up his new bookshelves.
This worked well until we decided it was time to return to our real home in New York City. Our problem now would be what we were going to do with all the stuff we had accumulated in the past 16 years.
I think this is as good a place to take leave of this first installment of my battle with clutter. For those of you "mature" (old) enough to remember when the movies were proceeded with the Saturday's serials, I invite you to be patient and learn the answers to the following questions:
- Would two simple folks from New England find happiness in the big city?
- Will they manage to move all their stuff to smaller quarters?
- Who would benefit from the stuff left behind?
