Sandstone Press

What to do with all the stuff

Posted by Moira Forsyth on 17th August 2010

I wonder where it all comes from.  We gather possessions without even trying.  I know a woman whose house burned down so that she lost everything.  She told me that the worst thing was losing all her family photographs. 

What would you save from the flames? 

OK right, get the cats out – priority.  My children are living elsewhere now so I’m not forgetting them.  And oh help the computer because all my work is on it, and I’m useless at keeping backups.  I have another hard drive now, and haven’t even managed to copy everything on to that.  By this time the smoke is choking and the flames are licking round the stairwell.  I’ve not got anywhere near the family photographs which are in a cardboard box deep in the cupboard in the eaves, so no hope of reaching them.  Paintings – they’re irreplaceable and cost a lot of money.  I’m a woman with two portraits of herself (one at twenty, one at fifty something and no, I don’t keep them in the same room) so I suppose I should rescue them as family heirlooms. 

Now the smoke’s so thick I can’t even see all the rest of my stuff.  My furniture and framed photos of my children and little jugs around the place kept fragrant with sweet peas, and the china cabinet that was my grandmother’s full of my aunt’s china and pretty glasses I bought with birthday money and….

The books!  How can I get a thousand books out of the house?  It’s falling down around my ears now anyway and my hair’s scorched and my clothes are crisping up at the edges.  My clothes!  I’ll never get such nice shoes again, the evening ones with the flower at the toes, the cream flats with tiny bows… my suits my shirts my jerseys my million white t-shirts, the jeans that fit so well….

Does it matter, all this stuff?  My aunt, aged ninety, has just gone into a nursing home and her whole house must be cleared and the contents disposed off.  Much of the furniture is going into store for her granddaughters, but she has only one small room of her own to house her essential belongings.  A large house with a basement is being emptied out.  A lifetime of stuff has to disappear.  My father is also ninety, still in his own home and very capable of remaining there independently, I’m thankful to say.  His idea of ‘clearing out’ is to give away stuff, from time to time, to my sister and me.  But she has just moved in with a new partner after more than ten years of widowhood, so she’s trying to fit two housefuls into one, and has more than enough stuff.  So have I, I’m just not very good and refusing to have more. 

It’s no good.  I can’t achieve minimalism.  I love my stuff.  I love my books and my linen cupboard with the sheets and pillowcases neatly stored, I love the cutlery and mugs and pine kitchen table and books and vases and clocks and….. I love them not because they’re worth lots of money – very little I suspect.  I love them because most of them have travelled with me through many years and are comfortingly familiar and friendly.  They reassure me that some things remain the same, and the fast changing world, uncertain and terrifying, is at least a little way off. 

So perhaps that’s why we should give money to the Pakistan appeal, to Haiti and to other disaster funds.  The world is full of people who have had their possessions torn from them, or who, as refugees, have had to abandon them.  They are left standing in the road, or at the edge of the river, with nothing.  We who have our world still with us, are very lucky.