Over the last 15 years, my wife and I have been on a mission to reduce the clutter in our home. We’re trying to get rid of things we no longer want or need, and to let go of the clutter that’s emotionally weighing us down. This is called decrapifying, and we’ve been doing it for a long time.
The goal is to be able to get rid of enough stuff so that, in 30 years, our kids won’t be sorting through crammed closets, saying, "My God, they had that when I was a baby!"
I’ve been eliminating much-beloved treasures since we first got married, because my wife taught me 1 Corinthians 13:11: "When I became a man, I put away childish things."
Which meant no more Salvador Dali posters, no matter how nicely they were laminated. No more Hulk Hogan cardboard cutout. No more Ultimate Frisbees on the wall. And goodbye to three years of Rolling Stone magazine that "might be worth something someday."
They never were.
She also gave my comic collection the stink-eye, but I managed to hide it away for several years before she ever discovered them.
To be fair, it’s hard to get rid of your possessions if you’ve had them for decades. A friend in his mid-sixties said he still has a jacket from his senior year in high school.
We all have clothes like that. There's your favorite t-shirt with enough holes that looks like you barely survived a shotgun blast.
Or the shoes with the one sole flapping like a swim fin that you kept because you wore them on your first date with your spouse. Besides, it’s barely noticeable! I just need some rubber cement, and it’s as good as new.
Or the dress shirts you haven’t worn for 20 years because they didn’t fit. I had shirts like this, but I lost a bunch of weight, and they fit again, so I look like a genius. Of course, I had to get rid of all the pants that were too big, but I don’t plan on wearing them again.
The decrapifying process takes three boxes labeled Keep, Donate/Dump, and I Don’t Know. Sort through your stuff and put everything in one of the boxes: Stuff you want to keep goes in the Keep box. Later, you’ll put everything away, and now you have an extra box.
Stuff you don’t want goes into the Donate/Dump box, which you either donate to a suitable charity or pitch in the garbage.
And into the I Don’t Know box goes anything you’re not sure you want. Seal that box for six months and store it. If you decide you need something in there within the six months, you can always dig it out.
But if you never thought about the box in that six-month period, get rid of it without ever opening it. You never needed it; you just didn’t want to make the decision, and now you can dump it without guilt.
The biggest barrier to our own decrapifying effort is the boxes: We keep boxes way longer than we need to.
We’ve kept some I Don’t Know boxes for three years because we’re too scared to throw them away, because we might need something in there.
We have a pile of Donate/Dump boxes sitting next to the front door in the hopes that we’ll take action soon. We’d better do it soon because we’re tired of dusting them off every month.
We also have empty electronics boxes that we keep "just in case" we may have to send them off for repair: That VCR won’t last forever, you know.
Most importantly, we keep several "Good Boxes."
Good Boxes are the ones that are sturdy, solid, trustworthy, and come in different sizes. They’re the bury-a-body-friend of boxes, the ride-or-die of boxes, the box you call after a nasty breakup. The boxes that are so important that you capitalize the name. The boxes you use at Christmas, but then ask for them back after everyone has unwrapped their gifts.
"Look, the stack of fifty $100 bills was your gift! I’m not giving you the damn box, too!"
A Good Box meets at least two of three important criteria:
1) It’s made of heavy-duty cardboard. The kind that takes some effort to bend. And forget about tearing it.
2) It’s clean on the bottom, so you won’t get your clothes dirty carrying it. In fact, you wash your hands before you touch it.
3) The best boxes have that smooth satin finish that you can’t stop running your fingers over, making your spouse think, "I remember when they used to touch me like that."
In the end, decrapifying is like that serenity prayer every Midwestern family had hanging in their den: God grant me the serenity to accept that I need to reduce clutter, courage to get rid of the things I don’t need, and the wisdom to hide my comic books in your wife’s Good Boxes.
Photo credit: PublicDomainPictures (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.