t’s a societal/sexual thing – we all really want some Japanese semi-dominatrix like Marie Kondo to force us to get rid of all our stuff. “No, mistress, please! Not my exorcise stuff in the garage!” “All of it! To the curb, worm!”

Really, in a way, she is right. We tend to keep too much shit. And if the first use of the internet is porn, the second is consumerism. No longer do we have to walk to the market, buy something impractical, and carry it all the way back to our farm. Now it’s one simple click. Across our culture, most social observances involves an exchange of goods: Christmas, birthdays, weddings. To me, I eventually got out of the “giving” thing all-together. I mean, if you are going to get me random shit with a $25 limit, I’d have already have it. If I even wanted it. Seriously.

So Kondo is right. And yes, there are people who stack way too much stuff into their houses. I’ve known a couple and suspect that I was, in some ways, the same. Too much crap. And that’s why we call them horders, and not in a nice way. Kinda sounds like “whore”, with the same sort of negative implication. In this case, they open their wallets, not their legs, for pleasure.

My recent experience with termites kinda brought that home for me. My wife was tending an ailinng family member, meaning it fell into my lap (or onto my back) to Sisyphus everything out to the pod (and then back) under a July sun (in Florida). When it came to moving it all back (and seeing how nice the empty house looked) I got rid of a lot of my old books. In fact, I shipped so many to the used book store than I made $450 (which, ironically, will be used for more books). I even documented getting ride of all my Diskworld novels here.

Okay, the house does look nicer, less stuffed with books. But on the other hand, it is less stuffed with books. Instead of “bringing me joy”, I was “loosing my identity”. People would come in and see all those dusty shelves crammed with titles of every manner of literature and be impressed. I’d look at their spines (the books, not the people) and smile, remembering the stories enjoyed, the history learned. And now, those depleted shelves bring me some joy but also an aching loss.

Many of the things we acquire are nothing but filler-crap, true. Too many gifts and too many impulse purchases. But some of these things do form an attachment with our pasts, a meaningful moment or endearing friendship represented in the physical item. I’ve got little mementos from every trip I’ve taken, just small Eiffel Towers and little wooden printing presses (I actually got a chance to press a page, once). I’m not saying I threw those out, but I did give away a lot of stuff, little things that were part of my little life.

And what I’m saying is that, yes, you can have too much stuff, but it really should go out if it is meaningless stuff.

This came to me when my wife was (finally) getting rid of a lot of the things that had REALLY cluttered her spaces in the house. In it was an old, old book, a big dusty thing, Birds of America. Apparently my late father had a passing fad with ornithology as a kid and someone gave him this book. It even had his sticker in it, a sailing ship with his name under it. Yes, his, from back when he owned it. I don’t think I’d ever even opened it. But as I carried it over to a friend’s place (who is into birds), I did feel a sense of disrespect, of loss, at surrendering this item from my life to another.

That’s the thing – all this clutter and crap that sweeps around us, it is us, like it or not. And maybe Kondo is right or maybe she isn’t – maybe she is represented by emptiness. But I am (was) defined by my impractical stacks of dusty old books.And the new decluttered version of self I now hold aches a bit at their loss.

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