More on Stuff

Excerpt from Daily Cures, Wisdom for Healthy Aging by Connie Mason Michaelis

What's your basement look like?

I must have hit a sensitive chord with last week’s column on stuff.  Many people mentioned that they completely identified with the humorous message.  Several reminded me of the famous George Carlin comedy routine on stuff, where he said, “A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.”  Whole industries have developed because of our fixation on stuff.  One hundred years ago, there wasn’t a need for storage units, recycling bins, walk-in closets, and 18-wheel moving trucks.  It is a challenging issue for those who lived through the depression when material goods were scarce and hard to come by. One of my most vivid memories of moving Mom to her retirement apartment was the rubber band scenario. 

For years, my mom collected the rubber bands that came wrapped around the daily newspaper.  She would hang them on the gear shift of her car- a habit created by the fact that she would pick up the paper in the driveway while coming and going.  Well, the rubber bands became an issue. She wanted to take them with her or give them to someone who needed them. It made no difference that the replacement value of the ten-year collection was 50 cents. The rubber bands became a symbol of her struggle to get rid of stuff along with used foil, butter tubs, etc.  For Mom, it felt wasteful, disrespectful, and downright sinful to dispose of perfectly good items.  The problem is that stuff keeps us stuck, it is like quicksand, and the longer you live without addressing it, the deeper you sink.  Maybe we could call it SOS (stuck on stuff).  Mom did move, and her apartment was a treasure chest of the most important things in her life.  Don’t be SOS.