I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m getting tired of the things I own.
I spent my entire adulthood accumulating things because I thought I would have fun. Things that would turn into a hobby I would enjoy. I could do something useful and creative with these things. They would make me happy.
After more than 30 years of this, I’ve concluded that I have too much stuff.
Things I bought. Things I traded for. Things I made. Things someone gave to me as a gift.
Also, books. Books don’t count as minor possessions because books are important. Everything else is just a distraction.
Lately, I’ve been going through everything I own to decide whether I want to keep it.
Again, except for the books. I always want to keep books.
I tried the Marie Kondo "Does it bring you joy?" clean-out process first. That’s where you take each thing you own and ask, "Does this spark joy any longer?" If it does, you keep it. If it doesn’t, you thank it for its service, and then throw it out like a ratty, old sweater.
This worked great for my old tax records, but it sucked for everything else. I tried asking my books, "Does this book spark joy any longer?" but the answer was always the same: a hearty "That’s a stupid question!"
I tried it for three whole books, and it was too emotionally exhausting, so I gave up.
It also didn’t work on my clothes, because I usually just wear shorts and t-shirts every day. For me, clothes are less about sparking joy and more about keeping me from getting sunburned or arrested.
My other clothes also don’t spark joy: sport coats, pants, and neckties, but I can’t get rid of those because I’ll need them for weddings, funerals, and the occasional court appearance.
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| This is my TBR pile; 80% of these are unread. |
So I put my other books on top of Marie Kondo’s book. That’ll show her!
I also tried the method called Swedish Death Cleaning, which is a Swedish tradition of getting rid of everything as you near the end of your life. It saves your loved ones the burden of having to throw everything out themselves once you die.
Except I worry that this is a cause-and-effect process, and that if I do this, I’ll die shortly afterward.
Which means that if I keep all my stuff, I’ll live forever.
Actually, I want to burden my children with all my stuff so they have a lot to clean up after I’m gone. I call it American Death Hoarding, and it involves accumulating as much stuff — especially books — as I can. I’ll convince my kids they're all really valuable and that they can only be hand-delivered to small rural libraries.
I’ve had to clean up after them plenty, so they can deal with all my stuff after I’m gone.
Every so often, I feel like I need a complete overhaul of my possessions. I don’t like keeping old things just because I’ve always had them. Oh, sure, I’ve got a few treasures that I’ll never get rid of. Like a statue of a little boy in a Dutch soccer jersey that my Oma gave to me. My paperback copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy that I got when I was 16. Or the copy of Catch-22 that my uncle loaned me and I never gave back.
There are the woodworking and building tools that I got when my wife and I got our first house, and I learned how to use every one of them.
There’s the old tie-dye t-shirt that I got in graduate school and hasn’t fit me since, well, 1993.
There’s the collection of vinyl records going back to 1978, when I first started buying KISS albums. And there’s the 1935 L.C. Smith and Corona typewriter that I bought 15 years ago. It’s 89 years old, making it the oldest thing I own, and I don’t ever plan on getting rid of it.
My wife says I should try getting rid of some of my books, but that’s just crazy talk. I haven’t read them all, so I can’t get rid of them yet.
I have hundreds of unread books, and I keep finding more in used bookstores. Plus, I borrow more from our local library. And I read Kindle Unlimited books every night before bed. So my unread book collection keeps growing, because I’m not actually reading any of them to reduce the number.
As any good collector of books knows, you will always have more books than you need, but you’ll never have as many as you want. Besides, I can’t die until I read them all, so my plan is to never read them all. That way, I’ll live forever!
Except I worry that one day, I’ll be found dead under a pile of collapsed books.
O, irony, where is thy sting?
Photo credit: Erik Deckers (hey, that's me!)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.