glaciers of garbage
About 20 years ago last century I started building our new house. 1992. Took a couple years, but when it was finished, I walked everything up the hill from the shack we’d lived in since 1977. I decided if I wasn’t willing to carry it up, it wasn’t worth keeping. You want to downsize, this strategy can’t be beat.
I cheated a little on the clawfoot tub and the wood cook stove and used my truck and a buddy or two with beer bribes, but otherwise I spent a week moving ant-like up and down the hill with occasional breaks to haul the discard pile to the dump or the thrift stores. By the time we took occupancy we were down to the bare essentials. All that clutter and crap from the shack was gone. And good riddance!
Fast forward a couple decades. Not only has the dust collected up here at the hacienda, but so have boxes, knickyknacks, books, CD’s, clothes and all the rest of those possessions piling up slowly enough to avoid detection or set off hoarder alarms. In a perfect world I suppose I’d build the next house back in the woods, then downsize again, taking only the necessities. This seems like a nuclear option and anyway, I’m too decrepit and old to build another mansion.
So … I’m going to Option B. I’m digging into every closet, every nook and most crannies, behind the stairs, up in the rafters, back in the crawlspaces. I’m hunting junk, scraps, extra dishware, broken pottery, bad art, tattered books, drawers of cassette tapes, stacks of vinyl, unused camping gear, beat up shoes, torn coats, old tape decks and Beta machines, analog cameras, relatives who never left, lost puppies, missing children, Romney advisors, leftover lunches, tube TV’s and every computer we ever owned. I want it out. Gone. Forgotten. I want space. I want Grand Vistas once again in the living room. I want closets that aren’t sedimentary. Pots and pans that aren’t archeological. Art that isn’t historical. I want my house back.
Seems like every twenty years or so this could hold back the glacier of garbage. Course, it might take twenty to finish the job. Check back in a year or so. See if I’m okay.
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