Stuff
What would you rebuild if you lost everything?
For the first 14 years of my life, we lived in a small home. It was filled to the brim—including the unfinished basement, attic, and 2-car garage. Then, we moved into a significantly larger home, complete with an attic, large basement (half unfinished, half finished) a 2-car garage (also with an attic!), several outbuildings and a pole barn. So much more room for more stuff! Within the first couple of years living in this much larger home it was, once again, filled to the brim. Around the time we moved, both sets of my grandparents downsized from their substantial, long-term family homes into one or two bedroom apartments in retirement communities. 40-50 years of stuff. Times two.
My parents, while conscious or unconscious, decided that if they adopted the most stuff from their parents it would:
mean they loved their parents more than their siblings (competition)
distract from the fact that we never really had a lot of money, by having a lot of stuff (scarcity)
Either way, our once-spacious house was now filled with far too much stuff. None of it made sense. We had 3—honestly maybe even 4— entire dining room sets: tables, leaves, chairs, china cabinets, buffet cabinets, etc. We only had one dining room. The furniture from my one Grandma was very ornate and fancy, not at all fitting with our built-in-1992 Midwestern home. The furniture from my other Grandma was slightly less fancy, more traditional, and yet still very out of place in our decidedly unfussy and causal family culture.
Beyond the furniture was… I really don’t even know. Just more… stuff. China, pictures, clothings, tools, art, sure— the nice stuff, but also just literally anything else. Not much got thrown away, or even donated, when my grandparents moved. “We’ll just bring it home, and deal with it later.” I remember how seemingly stressful this all was to my parents, they complained about how much stuff there was, we spent a lot of hours packing, unpacking, and rearranging. Not only did my parents decide to personally absorb most of the furniture of their parents, but since they lived the closest to my grandparents out of all of their siblings, and we had these extra, exterior buildings, we also ended up storing most of the stuff that my parents siblings claimed.1
When my Grandma died, my Grandpa gave me a few small decorative boxes that were filled with her stuff. They mostly contained lackluster, if not sweet, little trinkets: dice, playing cards, a few novelty tape measures, a letter opener, a bookmark. I waited a few years to open the last one, hoping maybe it would have a note from her to me, or some jewellery. When I sat down to finally open up this precious little box it was… filled with junk. Seemingly, everytime my beloved Grandma would get a new sweater that had a little paper envelope with more thread or a spare button, she would put it into this container. I waited all that time to open dozens and dozens of little paper envelopes with one or two spare buttons for a sweater she got from Talbot’s. Not one lick of anything sentimental, not one letter of her scrunchy, cursive handwriting anywhere, just paper and buttons and thread.
Until college, I had always lived among everything I had ever owned. My mother would never, ever throw anything away. Even if it was damaged, broken, or useless. “We have the space!” It was a form of control, some way of clinging to the past. Some form of dealing with abandonment and scarcity. A lot of stuff was projected onto the stuff that filled our home.
Every piece of clothing, every piece of art I had ever made in elementary school, every school supply, book, toy, and gadget— it was all kept. Not neatly. Not in away way that was ever useful. Stuffed in closets, piled in corners. Plenty of stuff got damaged and became useless simply from the lack of care in which it was “stored.” There was always some vague sense of “you can’t throw that away, you never know when you’ll need it!” but nothing was ever found when needed, no matter how many profanity-laced prayers were offered to St. Anthony. We also ate a lot of— almost exclusively— highly processed foods. There were always boxes and boxes of Triscuit Crackers, or Keebler Elf Sandwich cookies, or Diet Coke piled up on top of the counters or the fridge.
It was the beginning of my exposure to overconsumption. Lots of little knick knacks from the dollar store or the Current, Inc catalog. Every holiday (Valentines Days, St. Patricks Day — we are not Irish— , Easter, Memorial Day/4th of July/Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas) all had home decor items: window clings, towels in the bathroom, towels in the kitchen, a wreath for the front door, candles (that we’d never burn), table cloths, clothes, plates, mugs, just… so much damn stuff. While my mother “collected” holiday themed junk decor, my father’s hobby included the restoration of mid-century cars. There were entire cars, taken apart: a fender here, a front seat there, a steering where over here, and then all of the tools and sundry items need to fix it all up and put it back together. I guess I collected toys from McDonald’s Happy Meals, Beanie Babies, books, and CDs. Everything we collected was cheap, easy to find, quite garish, and attempting to fill some unspoken void.
This was the 90s and there was just so much paper around: newspapers, magazines, TV Guides, catalogs, junk mail, letters from friends, school newsletters. Everything we now receive in our email inboxes was piled up on the dining room table and the living room floor. “Oh, FUCK!” I’d hear, as some long-buried, and now overdue bill was found, who knows what piled on top of it, for who knows how long. This was well before online shopping would fill our homes with packaging, but still, there was just so much other… junk? Key chains, water bottles, empty cereal boxes, empty shopping bags. 4 or 5 pairs of gloves per person. If there was a place giving away free stuff, you better believe we were there, getting it. I recall one very cold evening when a new Guitar Center opened up and the local radio station was giving away baseball hats, tshirts, and key chains, and my family of three came home with enough of each to open a small souvenir stand. It got piled in a closet once we got home. I’m sure, buried somewhere, even after a move and nearly 30 years of time eslaped, one could find all of these little things tucked away somewhere in my parents home.
I really don’t remember anyone else’s home being quite like ours growing up. Sure, folks had messy homes, with their kitchen counters stacked with stuff, or their living rooms filled with toys, their garages a chaotic maze of garden, sports, and camping equipment. But it was my experience, that usually a few rooms were neat and tidy. Not every surface covered. Not every closet a deathtrap. On the incredibly rare occasion someone would come over, there would be a ten minute drill which consisted of my mother carrying around a laundry basket filling it and dumping it’s contents into her bedroom, a closet, or the basement. That pile of stuff would sit where it was dumped for… years? When we moved from the small house into the bigger house, I remember packing up boxes with piles of junk that none of us could account for, only for it all to remain in a new, bigger pile when it was unpacked.
To be clear: my bedroom was no exception. It was a disaster. I remember feeling quite pleased with myself that no monsters could even fit under my bed or in either of the two (!) closets I had in my room, there was simply too much stuff. It was like a booby-trap, no one would dare creep around in the dark because there really wasn’t anywhere to step. When I filled up the space in my room, my parents installed shelves, vertically up the walls. Twice. There was always more space, getting rid of anything was never allowed. (I tried a few times: to edit my closet down, throw away old folders or papers from school, and months later would find that my mother had gone through the trash to retrieve these precious items and place them in a pile in the basement or some closet.)
I was often chastised by my parents for having a messy room. What an ungrateful little bitch I was, not taking care of my belongings. (These are their words, not my inner critic, though, it’s hard to separate the two sometimes.) I learned pretty quickly that it was not in my best interest to point out that I did not actually know if the flooring in my parents bedroom was wood or carpet because I had never actually… seen the floor of their room, either.
It was suffocating. All that stuff. All that holding on to. All that clinging. All that projecting. No space for anything, and yet endless space for everything.
One time I was helping to put away Christmas decorations, and I slipped and fell down the stairs. My mother heard the commotion and came running…pushing right past me to see if I had damaged any of her precious vintage Christmas ornaments. (I was fine, as where the ornaments…)
I got to college and moved into a 16x12 foot dorm room I shared with another girl. Of course, I brought too much stuff, though so did she. She had a desktop computer (this was 2008) which I thought was insanae. I brought a mini fridge, even though we had unlimited access to the meal hall which was open from 6a-midnight, 7 days a week, which she thought was insane. The mini fridge remained empty except for the occasional bottle of liquor I would feel gutsy enough to bring into the room.
What did I learn sharing a teeny dorm room with a stranger? I liked things neat and tidy. Like any extreme, I really leaned in. I would go on to develop some very obsessive habits about neatness. That is another story for another time…
After I graduated college, I moved into a two bedroom apartment all by myself. I rounded up some of my grandparents furniture, just enough to make it functional. The second bedroom only had one futon in it, nothing else. It was blissful. Empty corners. Nothing on my very-out-of-place Georgian-style dining room table. The kitchen looked like no one ever cooked there. Then I would move to Chicago into a truly huge apartment, compete with a second floor loft, that I shared with one of my best friends. She had a lot of stuff. But it was different—it was all really nice stuff. Every sort of kitchen gadget you could imagine, think of a craft or art project, and every supply you would ever need was housed in that loft. And decor! So. Much. Decor. She worked in visual merchandising for a furniture store and would bring home everything from coffee tables, to rugs, to vases, to mattresses all the time. Meanwhile, I had amassed enough clothing, shoes, and accessoires to open a boutique or two. It was a lot of stuff, and we spent a lot of time and energy taking care of it all. We would often end up fighting about it: whose turn it was to clean or where we were going to store whatever thing one of use had brought home that day.
In May 2014, I moved to New York City only with 2 suitcases. I was fresh off of a breakup, heartbroken, and hell bent on living my dream: being in fashion in NYC. I just packed clothes, some books, and my laptop. Everything else, all of my second- and third-hand furniture, had made its way back to my parents house. All of my carely sourced (read: Target clearance rack) decor items now also stored there.
For 6 years, I shared a ~400 foot 2 bedroom (yes, a proper two bedroom, windows, closets and all in each bedroom. My bedroom was 6’x10’, my roommates was 10’x10’) I would fill every square inch of it. It was so optimized. Many New Yorkers would walk in and freak out. It was so small, how did we live in a space so small? To me, it was perfect. Sure, I would have liked a TV bigger than the 14” computer monitor we used. Sure, a bigger kitchen would be nice, no that wasn’t really a dining room, just a space in front of a closet I put a custom built table for two, but I had everything I needed.
Living in NYC was an embodied lifestyle of less is more. What is absolutely paramount? Much, much less than I’d ever imagined. Sure, these were the Marie Kondo years, and my roommate and I had a very strict one in/ one out policy, but it was very neat, tidy, and well organized. It didn’t take much time to clean or maintain because, well, it was so damn small, but also because everything had a place. We had a mental inventory of every single item that was in that space. No square inch was unaccounted for.
Then I’d move into a huge-for-NYC, 2 bedroom apartment with my partner. It was the first time in a long while I had more space than stuff. He had also come to the city just in suitcases. We did a very NYC thing and shopped the streets. We were blessed with some insane free scores: two matching 6’ tall wooden bookcases, a wooden headboard, many pieces of art, a bedframe, two desks. We outfitted, and filled the space, just-like-that 🫰. Less than a year later, we would uncouple. Very quickly, he decided that he was going to stay in that apartment, and I decided not only was I going to move out of that apartment, but I was going to move out of New York City.
I didn’t want to deal with the stuff. Who was keeping the plates, or the mirror, or the art, or the blankets, or the bookcases— so I left it all there for him. I did not have it in me to have the angaozing splitting of stuff. I packed up my (admittedly huge, hello 15 years in the fashion industry) wardrobe, some books and art, loaded up a rental car and left. My idea was so use one of those Uhaul pods to ship my stuff to wherever I was going to next.
At this point in my life, a lot was happening, a lot was coming to the surface, my internal world was completely shifting, and so naturally, my external world began to shift rapidly.
I spent a few months at my uncle’s house on the North Fork, and promptly started an entirely new life, complete with a new romantic relationship and new job/career. I had lot less stuff, but a shitload more baggage.
When it was time to leave my uncles, which was only ever going to temporary anyway, I surveyed what was left of my stuff. Nearly a decade in New York City, and what remained could fit in a closet. This new person in my life encouraged me to have even less stuff. “I have that book, we don’t need two.” he encouraged. Since I was no longer spending Monday-Friday at a corporate fashion job, my large collection of “day dresses” was now pretty useless. Same with the 100ish pairs of shoes I had collected.
I edited everything down to what would fit in 2 suitcases (clothes, mostly) and 2 small FedEx boxes (one for my sewing supplies, and one for my backpacking gear) and flew to the desert.
Yes, I chose to shed most of my stuff, and this moment remains one of the most potent thresholds of my life.
This moment was when I was confronted with what do I really need to rebuild a life?
I thought I was going to be rebuilding a life with someone, but he got edited out quicker than he came in.
I woke up one morning, still at his house, with all of his stuff, and not much of mine, deep in grief— not one, but two relationships ended within a matter of months— I had left a city that was home, an entire career, and then a sludge of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse came pouring in.
Everything was gone.
Every.
Last.
Thing.
A entire life, 32 years in the making, was burned to the ground.
It wasn’t just the papasan chair, or the dishes from West Elm, or the mattress, or the 37 books, or the artwork, or the candles, or the art supplies, or my dresses, it very quickly included shallow-if-not-decades-long friendships, and an entire family that was lost to the flames and chaos of the truth.
It was humbling and it was so fucking freeing.
Was it overwhelming in moments too, yes, of course.
There were weeks and months, when I would go to look for something only to remember I had let it go, or left it behind accidently in the haste of the editing process.
I was then confronted with how much stuff I had projected onto my stuff. Self worth, mostly. Also safety, security, a sense of home and belonging. An identity. My selfhood was in the stuff I had, or now didn’t have.
As I’ve watched the rains and fires strip away everything from our brothers and sisters in North Carolina and California, and the bombs decimate everything in Gaza, and the, and the, and the…
It resonates like a gong in my body. Can you hear it? A dire prophecy.
We must reckon with our stuff.
It’s not the stuff that is the problem, let me be clear. It is our relationship to the stuff.
What we make our stuff mean.
We are whole without our stuff, without our physical belongings.
I’m not saying when a fire comes roaring though your home and you lose every last thing, including your dignity, that it doesn’t fucking suck. That it isn’t painful and disorienting and extremely unpleasant. It can take weeks, months, or even a whole lifetime to recognize that it’s a rite of passage.
I texted a friend the other day, going through a similar life-burning-down-series of events that shifting from outer points of reference (jobs, places, friends), to inner points of reference (your soul, the Divine) is bumpy as hell but also so profound and an endless well of resource opens up.
Particularly with the fires in LA, is so much avoidance, and love and light. Lots of “It’s just stuff!” And then equal parts “You can’t tell people it’s just stuff!” So much support and GoFundMes to “rebuild,” so many IG stories of influencers and celebrities “clearing a list!” (The practice of, like a wedding registry, registering at Amazon, or Target for the essentials, and soliciting a signal boost from someone with a large following, whose followers spend maybe $20 each to buy a stranger a new spatula or pair of slippers.) Very little sitting with the fact that we all probably have too much stuff, and the culture is only instabile for more.
There are people whose entire six-figure-salary job is to show everything they bought to strangers on the internet. This has become so ubiquitous to so many that we have, as a society, lost track of how fucking crazy this is. A brief pause for some deep irony here, as I thrash about and trash this system while deeply embedded within it. I went to college to be a “buyer” which was (is?) a very real job in which one person, or a small team of people, decide what merchansidse will be available for everyone else to purchase at a store. 13 years ago when I graduated college, I was essentially an influencer without a social media following, just access to a million-dollar open-to-buy at a small brick and mortar boutique.
Reckoning with our addiction to stuff feels so pressing in these times of global, elemental upheaval. A way I’ve been looking at these instances in the US is something like a hard reset. The minerals, and elementals, the Earth, the other-than-human kin saying ENOUGH. What I have found in my lived experience, and in hearing the many stories of folks who have lost everything— whether it be because of a literal fire, or bankruptcy, or leaving a dangerous relationship, or whatever else— is what a damn blessing it was. Not as a way of bypassing all of the difficult, thorny edges of the experience, but because it is an ego death. Because then your real “stuff” appears. The core wounds. While I was dragging my suitcases all over Portland, OR the summer after I burned my life down, I wasn’t spending much time tending to a home, and therefore my stuff. Instead I was spending time tending to my shattered heart, and the illusions of what I thought was my reality. That can be easy to avoid that when you have to organize your garage, decant all of your cereal into clear glass containers, and decorate for the holidays.
What would you rebuild if you lost everything?
It is probably an important inquiry for us all because it’s really not out of the realm of possibility that some elemental force might take everything away from us whether it be the US government, a foreign government, the bubbling New World Order, or God herself via a fire/rain/snow/ice/hail/tropical storm.
Or, if you’re sick of talk therapy because it’s not making a dent in the codependency, scarcity, fear, anxiety, etc and, damn, you might have to burn your own damn life down as an offering to actual growth and maybe, just maybe, even liberation.
What is your stuff, your physical belongs, allowing you to ignore within? How much energy to do you spend keeping track of all of the stuff you own? Or want to own? How many times have you thought “I don’t have enough money!”? Enough money for what? More stuff? Again, stuff is not the problem. Filling a void because we didn’t get our needs met as children, with endless hauls of new clothes, or containers to organize your beauty supplies in, or it’s name-brand-and-was-on-sale-at-Costco-so-I-bought-you-one-too is maybe not the best strategy.
Destruction is not something to be feared or hated or avoided.
Destruction and death is what begets birth and creation.
Destruction is from which all things new are possible.
Alchemy is not possible with a literal or metaphorical fire.
What can burned off, washed away, or given as an offering for more space, more truth, more Self?
Home is not a place to store all of the stuff we traded hours of our precious lifeforce and labor to obtain.
Home is not a place or a thing.
You are home.
Once I began to do Ancestral Lineage Healing, particularly on my Father’s Father’s line, all of my uncles decided to come to my parents house one weekend and finally collect all of the stuff that had been stored in my father’s barn for nearly 15 years. A very literal “taking care of our own stuff” moment. A very literal space being cleared in the home. Very literally, less stuff that my father, and also my brother and I, had to hold onto. Little did anyone really understand or comprehend the level of stuff that we had all be holding onto and hiding among…
From your WNC friend living post Helene and supporting a mother-out-law moving from her home into long-term care, this resonates deeply.
Damn, this piece is so good!!