A thought came to me while at Wal-Mart today: another junk season is here. The summer junk is half price and the new junk is ready to roll. I saw racks of summer clothing, brightly colored plastic tumblers, pool noodles, iced tea mixes and flip flops, interspersed with back-to-school notebooks, multi-packs of dorm supplies and the first of the long sleeved tops.
We are a society obsessed with our seasonal collections and purges, when we throw out the notebook with thirty good pages in it into the trash because the new one at the store is only fifty cents and a bargain. That is, if you find the old notebook. It may be in a pile with some old comic books or hiding under the old model I-Pad. When you have too many of these things–clothes the kids may have outgrown, but you can’t get them to sit still long enough to try them on, the remaining books on the “to read list” from last year, the six cosmetics you tried before you found one that worked–you wind up with clutter.
Whole reality programs are devoted to clutter. It seems some of us can lose control of our homes’ cleanliness because of clutter. A need to keep things ready for use someday can become an obsession which is bad for one’s mental health and can grow into a health hazard. Yet I have seen a strange phenomenon in our public spaces in which a container or wrapper, the second after the product within is consumed, becomes untouchable and gets dropped to the ground instantly, whether a trashcan is within reach or not. When you see a bag from a fast food place sitting in the middle of a parking lot, you know what I mean. If we could apply that philosophy to our indoor lives, life would be simpler and less likely to become a hoarder’s paradise.
There is something sad about hoarders. They can often be forgotten individuals with no human contact outside their homes and/or enabling family members or a few close friends who overlook the problem. The hoarder wants to still be useful, and thus so does their clutter. The hoarder won’t throw out the notebook with thirty good pages in it, because somebody could use it. Somebody who can’t afford fifty cents would love to have that used notebook for free, and the hoarder would be able to serve a purpose by having it available for them.
The middle ground between the throwaway society and the hoarding society is such a tenuous expanse, and our earth is filled with more clutter than a million hoarder’s houses, yet we still want the new thing and still want to get the empty soda cup out of our hands at once.
A great family project would be to do an annual purge party, in which the old stuff is donated or thrown out if it really can’t be used, the useful can be refurbished (that notebook might look great with some craft tape or some pictures and glue) and you can save money you don’t need to spend on new stuff.
As for hoarders, they need to feel important and useful. They are, after all, taking charge of all the junk others might throw away. Clean-out crews often just throw everything into a truck and take it away, and hoarders tend to get upset because they feel their collections are being wasted. We need to take a better look at how we deal with our stuff, not throw it out haphazardly, not waste it nor let it collect and draw dust, bugs or worse. Things do have a purpose, so donate, recycle or buy new with that in mind. Don’t be ruled by the trendy, and don’t take the old for granted.
And take that soft drink cup those ten steps to the trashcan.
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