The following is a post from my website Chrissy…In Her Sixties, which I am currently working on shutting down. The website you are now looking at, That Hobbit Lady, has been with me since November 2004 (nearly 20 years) and contains over 500 posts. In Her Sixties only goes back to 2017, with less than 40 posts. So, you see…in the interest of consolidating, I could either send 500+ posts from That Hobbit Lady to In Her Sixties, or 30+ posts from In Her Sixties to That Hobbit Lady. In addition to the math of that first option not making much sense, it also happens that the term “In Her Sixties” will only to apply to me for a few more years. But I will be a Hobbit Lady forever. So: no-brainer.
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September 24, 2017
It’s been my lifelong pursuit to always find ways to IMPROVE, whether it’s personal, spiritual, my house, or my creative projects. I strongly feel a need to always be moving in the direction of making everything better and more manageable. That’s why the idea of “tidying” appeals to me so much.
Of course I’ve always been a fan of “tidying,” though until I read Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I knew it by other names: de-junking, de-cluttering, downsizing, embracing Minimalism. Not that I am a Minimalist, not by a long shot! But it seems most of my adult life has been a journey towards greater clarity and simplification in both my physical world and mental mindset.
The process of tidying begins by first identifying those items that have use and meaning and spark joy, then eliminating those that have no (or less) use and meaning and joy. So, stuff is always going OUT, but at the same time, stuff may also be coming IN. Life is a constant process of stuff going out and coming in, and hopefully, at least if you are mindful about it, the stuff that goes out is stuff that NEEDS to go out, and the stuff that comes in is stuff that adds value to your life.
So by doing this, and by being mindful about it, you constantly have the opportunity to improve. And you might even say you are “sculpting” your life, by removing chunks which don’t contribute to the overall design you seek, and also by adding very particular globs here and there to bring greater clarity and definition to the overall design you seek.
If you are wise, you will seek a design that is simple, yet beautiful. That’s what I’m working on. I’ve removed many things that aren’t working, and I’m looking forward to removing even more. At the same time, how much stuff am I buying all the time? Probably too much. At least, before I purchase something, I need to ask myself, “Is this going to improve my life, and fit in with the overall design I am seeking? Will it bring joy?”
When Mom died, Terry and I went through her “stuff” and some of it was valuable and sentimental, but boy, did she have a lot of clothes! Now, that was important to her, the same way office supplies are to me (but, come to think of it, Mom liked her office supplies too…) But that’s okay. It’s okay to have stuff you like. But at the same time, it made me realize how much of a burden it can be for those who have “clean up after you” when you die, if you have a bunch of crap. Not that Mom’s stuff was “crap,” far from it! She actually had some very classy, very nice clothes, but most of it didn’t fit me, or wasn’t my style, but still, I ended up with two nice pairs of sandals, and a couple of tops that I wear on a constant basis, so I hope Mom is looking down and enjoying that I’m still putting these things to good use.
But getting back to my topic of “tidying,” the whole experience of looking at all the stuff Mom left behind made me realize thatI don’t want to leave an exceptional amount of stuff when I die. In particular, I don’t want to leave anything that will “bore, embarrass or burden the next generation.” (Reference Don Aslett, how this whole de-junking idea came into my life, decades ago.)
I also have this sense, more and more lately, that my lifelong idea of saving things for “the future” is becoming less important than it used to be. In many ways, the future is NOW. NOW is the time I need to be looking at and living in.
Case in point: The cookie press. I remember this cookie press from when I was a kid, it seems like it’s been in the family forever, and to be sure, it was an important item at one time in the past, full of many happy memories. But now that I’m pretty much gluten-free, and since I’m not really a big fan of cooking and baking in the first place, let’s be honest: it’s highly unlikely I’d ever use it again. So I packed it up in a lovely little wicker basket and passed it on to my niece Gabriela, who is twelve, and has many years of baking cookies ahead of her. Hopefully she will have the chance to make new happy memories with that old cookie press.
Now let’s talk about books. First of all, if you can get the info on the internet, you don’t need it on your shelf. Remember the old and moldy days when everyone had 26 volumes of encyclopedias on their bookshelf? Thank goodness those days are over! I’ve recently gone through my bookshelves and eliminated probably dozens of reference books that were extremely useful…once upon a time, back in the 1990’s, before the internet. Now, they are just so many pieces of paper taking up valuable real estate in my house. So…out they go!
Russ and I have been emptying the bookshelves, but there’s still this whole ‘nother category in our house: Binders. I am a BIG fan of storing things in binders. I have binders for everything from “Cat” to stories I wrote in high school. I need to look into getting as much information as possible on to discs, flash drives or a portable drive, so it doesn’t have to take up so much valuable real estate on the shelves. But before I do that, I really need to clean out all those binders, and the file cabinets, remembering that not everything is sacred forever.
How about photographs? My daughter Mary subscribes to the thinking that all photographs should be digitized and put on flash drives. I agree. But if you look at my collection of photos, you’d realize scanning all these hundreds upon hundreds (literally, hundreds) of photos could end up being a part-time job for the better part of a year! I contend it might be a good idea to go through all the photos and collect The Best of the Best and put them together in a single album (and also make a digital copy of that album.) Also, it’s probably true that many, many of those photos should just be eliminated. But all this is a project that comes AFTER I deal with some of the bigger items. (Update 2024: I DID actually eventually take on the project of scanning hundreds and hundreds of family photos, keeping only a handful of the most precious in binders, and though it was a monumental task, in the longrun I’m certain it was well worth the effort!)
I’ve never really been a “clothes hound,” yet when I recently did my Marie Kondo tidying up, I discovered that I had close to 50 skirts! Honestly. ( will admit to being a “skirt hound,” who almost never wears pants.) Even after applying Kondo’s test of “Does this spark joy?” I still came out with slightly over 40 skirts. But now that I’ve looked at each one, and asked that all-important question about Joy, I feel so much more mindful about what I put on each morning. Same thing with the tops. And folding the tops the KonMarie way, so that all are clearly visible when I open the drawer, has made me feel like I have so many more tops than I did before.
Another “big” area I need to work on is the kitchen. I know it’s going to be a monster project, so I keep putting it off, though I have made some tiny inroads along the way. For instance, my spices used to be all over the place—some on a shelf here, others in a cabinet there, and still others tucked away in a basket, so I never really knew what I had. But I now have all the spices neatly lined up on two spice racks in (mostly) beautiful glass bottles. Improvement!
I also need to tackle the bathrooms, with all those health and beauty products. I admit, I tend to fall prey to the snake oil salesman, always willing to buy some new thing that promises to cure a problem or make something better. To my credit, I buy these things because I am indeed trying to make improvements in my life. I think I just need to be a little more discerning before I press the “Purchase Now” button. Also, I need to USE the products I have, before I get more products.
A real problem area for me is the front room/guest room, since that room tends to function as the “junk drawer” of the house. When I want to clear the living room or bedroom, I bring the clutter into the front room so I can deal with it later. And sometimes later never comes. I have a lot of books and notebooks and papers that don’t really have a place to live, so they just sort of sit on the bed in piles. It’s pathetic. I need to find/make a place for this stuff, or get rid of it!
The garage? Ugh. Not even going to talk about it right now.
For a while I was so intrigued by the idea of the “tiny house,” until I realized there’s no particular reason to squeeze into a super small space (unless you want to be a traveling gypsy, which I don’t.) But you can cut down on your possessions so that there is more SPACE in your house, and more AIR circulating. And less clutter, and less dust. You can live a “Tiny House” life in a normal sized house! After watching countless Tiny House TV shows, I finally realized I don’t need a smaller house, I simply need LESS STUFF.
This is all a long, complicated procedure, and I’m not going to get it all done in one weekend, or even in one month, and it may take even longer than a year. But at least I have started. And that makes me feel better, and makes me feel more in control, in a world that has gone out of control.
