It all started when the Colorado downpours saturated the
ground and created a moat around my sister’s window well and then breached the “dam”.
As those things fill up with water, the windows have no chance. Water
rushed in.
That was three weeks ago while I was there for a couple of days. While my
brother-in-law and I tried to keep the craziness to a minimum, furniture was
moved and stuff shuffled around or more honestly, tossed aside. My sister works more hours than I knew were
available in a week so the basement was already typical, American storage space and well, disorder.
It was the classic- “One of those days I’m going to tackle the basement”. Frankly, after the mini-flood the basement became complete chaos. One easy
solution was to just close the basement door and think about it later. Until
the cat brought in a bird and proceeded to chase it around in said basement
before dining on parts and leaving a carcass and lots of feathers. The basement moved up the list of weekend chores.
The prospect of facing the clutter and the tossed aside
furniture was too much. But life has a way of forcing us to confront our stuff-
the exterior clutter and the interior confusion, as well. So the last weekend I visited. my sister
and I had a lovely bike ride planned but the furnace blew a thingy and poured
smoke into the house and obviously needing tending. Her husband, lovely
man that he is, doesn’t do household crisis/repairs well on his own. He’s
a great cook and does his own laundry so that's a good tradeoff. Plus
Janet knew an old acquaintance with a HVAC handy husband. “Sure, we’ll come by and
look at it after the boy’s football game. Be great to see you. Etc.”
Hurrah! Problem’s not solved but we’re no longer in
the literal smokey haze of broken furnace with winter coming on. But of course,
the furnace.... is in the basement.
Long story short (too late, you say....)- we hauled a pile
out of the basement. Several piles. All the office catalogs from a previous
job, some rain soaked fiberboard, lots of paper work, knick-knacks earmarked to go to Goodwill that had snuck into the basement when her back was
turned. And it’s always easier to really sort and pitch with a kind friend. Or
a bossy, older sister. “Seriously, why do you have a catalog from 2009?”
So we arranged furniture, planned for a painting project
and generally patted ourselves on the back. The next morning, after church and a nice big
breakfast, I was reading the Sunday paper and came across Howard Mansfield’s
article, “An American Dilemma: Your Clutter or Your Life.”
“It’s now 'physically possible that every American could
stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self-storage roofing,”
boasts the Self Storage Association. There are about 51,000 storage facilities
in the country — more than four times the number of McDonald’s. The storage shed is a symptom of our cluttered lives. Clutter is the cholesterol of the home, it's clogging the hearth."
He goes on to make great observations on the toll that
clutter takes on our lives, our peace of mind, our family time, our living
time. “Clutter is choking our shelters. Is there any room left for us in
our houses?”
We agreed. We want to live simple. We want to have less,
haul stuff away, give it away. Janet said for every thing she brought
into the house, a similar item had to leave. And we had really made a dent in
the basement and had several boxes to donate. We looked at each other and with one breathe we
both exclaimed, “We should do a Goodwill run!” We are incorrigible. But
off we went to search for pillows for the new basement plan and any other absolute
treasures we "need".
But on the way, we found a large bill board advertising a
new business venture for her town, which is just south of metro Denver.
Yes, you read that right. Not only can all of America
stand under the roof area of the millions of storage units where we store stuff we
can’t fit into our houses, now you can buy a condo to store your car. Now
granted, these are high-end collectible cars. Not like Beanie Babies that
failed to return on their promised investment value but real assets. Like you
have in a bank. Or in a vault. For cars
“Village at Vehicle Vault. Built to provide the elite car collector a place to keep and maintain their investments and share their passion with a like-minded community of car enthusiasts.” http://www.vehiclevaultco.com/
We decided it was a high-class storage unit, the kind you
could proudly open the doors and share with fellow hoarders, I mean
enthusiasts. We laughed, took pictures and proceeded to not just one but two Goodwills where we scored fabric for pillows and a pair of absolutely necessary black capris. And a cute pair of brand new shoes. Don't judge.
So... not sure the moral, the lesson, even the point of
all this. It just felt very ironic to be motivated to go shopping after
we emptied a space that had been full of clutter. And driving by the
construction site for yet another storage facility/ museum struck me as the
height of irony in a culture that even has a word for simplicity.
Either way the bird feathers are gone, the basement's cleaned, the furnace is
being pondered and we had an epiphany. I just forgot what it was. Maybe
my mind’s a bit cluttered.
