Why I’m Keeping My Stuff (And Why That’s Okay)

In my Violet Lemon Drop Martini post, I mentioned that my son has decided to get rid of about 50% of what he owns after being forced into apartment living following the house fire. It sparked a lot of conversation. So many people are on a mission to reduce clutter, simplify their lives, and cut down on maintenance. I’ve tried that path too, and it just didn’t work for me.

 

 I know I need to let go of quite a few things around here. But the truth is, I’m not an empty-surface kind of girl. When I once packed away roughly half of what I owned, the house felt hollow. Sterile. Uncomfortable. Like I was living in someone else’s space instead of my own. Some folks thrive with clean, minimalist decor. Others are full-on maximalists. I fall somewhere in between, but what I do know is that I love my things. I love being surrounded by them, because nearly everything I own carries a story.

 Take the palm trees in my living room. They once belonged to a Coors beer display in a local supermarket. I stripped off the fairy lights and the “Coors Spoken Here” signs, and for the past decade they’ve lived happily in different corners of the house. My affection for them hasn’t faded one bit.

 

 Then there’s the menu man in the dining area—he has quite the backstory. And the gallery wall tucked in the corner of my bedroom? That space is especially dear to me. It holds Jim’s graduation picture from the seminary (yes, he was a priest before he became a professor), a Glenn Miller autograph along with a handwritten program of songs his band played when they rehearsed on the steps of Yale’s Sterling Library, passed down to me by my father shortly before he died. There’s also a handwritten postcard from Jeremy Brett (the man who embodied Sherlock Holmes), complete with his own sketch on the cover. Oh, and a Stetson pith helmet gifted to me by friends Delta Burke and Gerald McRaney. And that’s only one small corner of the bedroom. The rest of the house tells similar tales.

 

 I happen upon things, I’m given things, I stumble across things, I uncover things, and each one makes me feel loved and connected.

 

 Since I was very young, I’ve needed to be surrounded by my belongings. That hasn’t changed, and I don’t expect it will. Kudos to those of you who can organize ruthlessly and discard with ease. I’m simply not built that way. I’ve been a book person since I learned to read. To me, a room isn’t truly a room without a pile of books nearby. I want to be able to sit down and reach in almost any direction to grab something to read.

 

 I once tried clearing everything off my kitchen counters in the name of simplicity. Big mistake. It didn’t make life easier, it made it harder. Every time I needed a particular appliance, I had to trek out to the garage or down to the basement. Now everything stays out where I can reach it in a moment, and I love it. This is a working kitchen, after all.

 

 The club chairs in my living room are battered and worn, but they belonged to my parents. My mother passed away in February 2013. Five years earlier, she had wanted to have them recovered because they were showing their age. Then her health issues piled up, and it never happened. When I had to sell their house, those chairs were the very first things I brought home. They sit in my living room now. As much of a perfectionist as I am, it still surprises me that I haven’t had them reupholstered. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. Every time I look at them, I see my dad working the crossword puzzle in the newspaper or quietly sipping a martini. When he passed away so unexpectedly, I kept that martini glass and the pencil he used for his puzzles. In the same way I wear everyone’s wedding rings (as I wrote about before), I surround myself with pieces of the people I’ve loved, along with souvenirs from my travels with Jim. This is my little cocoon, and it comforts me.

 

 I used to worry about leaving all of this behind for my boys to deal with someday, when I move on to whatever comes next. But then I learned about estate companies that can come in and empty an entire house in a week—selling, donating, or discarding everything with brisk efficiency. Knowing that option exists has freed me. I’m not going to change the way I like to live just to make things slightly easier for someone else in the future, when the help is already out there waiting if they need it.

 

 So here I am, happily surrounded by my stories, my memories, and my well-loved things. And for the first time in a long while, I’m perfectly at peace with that.