Stuffed

By Terri Lively

One of my jobs in my role as housewife is to manage stuff. My stuff, the kids’ stuff, my husband’s stuff, other people’s stuff, the school stuff, the house stuff, the stored stuff, the car stuff, and the baby’s stuff…you get the picture. Lots of stuff.

We file stuff. We store stuff. We eat stuff. We use stuff. We break stuff and then we buy stuff to replace it. And when it’s time to put it away, I get to decide where to stuff it.

We have a small house. We bought it right after we got married because all the wedding gift stuff  didn’t fit in our apartment.

When we bought it there were just the two of us and a cat. Then we added a dog. At that point, we fit in the house nicely, and had plenty of room for all of our stuff. Back then I had a guest room and an office. Two whole rooms that were barely used.  We basically just cleaned them from time to time. We also never used the guest bathroom. Instead of scouring it, I think my cleaning lady dusted it.

Over the years as we have added family members, we moved things around. First we lost the office to become the nursery. But we just moved the office into the guest room next door, creating what Designed to Sell calls a slash room: home office/guest room. But we soon lost the “/guest room” when it became simply my husband’s office, no /.

Then, with all three bedrooms full of stuff and purpose, we had a new family member coming and nowhere to put her. So we built a new room for her. Well, actually the new room was for my son and we moved her into the room that was his.

We were set for a couple of years until Gavin came along. Now the new room is both Brenton and Hayden’s room and their old room is Gavin’s. They all have a lot of stuff. And we had stuff there already. So I spent a week moving stuff around.

This is Stuff Shifting. When I am cranky about it, I use another s-word. This is family-friendly blog, however, so you’ll just have to use your imagination on that one.

We are approaching a point where we are looking at way too much stuff again. We were considering moving to a bigger house. But that meant packing up the stuff and moving it. Not. Going. To. Happen.

So instead, I did a purge. The only problem is I am usually the only one in the family on board with the purge. It’s not their fault. They just love their stuff.

I recall the moment when my two oldest children were standing in the driveway sobbing as the delivery men loaded the worn out washer and dryer on the truck to haul them to the dump. The hulking teamster tough-guys were visibly unsure of what to do when my kids’ tears started rolling. I assured the men that they should take the broken appliances. They did but I could tell they felt bad about it, making little kids cry. Hayden actually called out a tear-soaked “I love you” to the old Whirlpool pair as the truck drove them away.

Last week I decided to organize a couple of drawers in my son’s dresser that couldn’t close because we had so much stuff shoved in it. I found a few mismatched socks and a couple of pairs with holes in them. No reason to keep these…or so I thought.

My son set me straight. He cried actual tears, clutching the socks to his six-year-old breast, and accused me of trying to steal his “best socks” and throw them in the trash. I let him keep the socks.

A couple of days ago I sent some baby toys that no one plays with up to a friend who needed baby stuff. I was happy because I was able to free up space in the baby’s room for stuff moving over from the older kids room. I made a critical error in my disposal plan, however. I sent them up with my kids. And lo and behold, some of the stuff came back.  This is my least favorite kind of stuff: boomerang stuff.

This is why I sometimes do some purging when everyone else is gone. I play dumb when the kids are looking for stuff that I have passed on. “I don’t know…where did you have it last?”  I ask, avoiding eye contact and making a hasty exit.

My husband is determined to go on a long RV trip. I won’t go. I hate RVs. They are the opposite of vacation to me. When I leave, I want to leave as much as my stuff behind as possible, not drag it around with me in a huge, drive-thru wrecking, 2-lane highway clogging RV. I want to be footloose and fancy- free.

In an RV, you are neither footloose nor fancy-free. You not only have your stuff with you, but you also get to bring along all your shower water and bathroom sh…stuff, too. No thanks.

My daughter is the opposite of me. She loves her stuff. All her stuff. When she was just three, I learned how deep her attachment was to her stuff.

She had a clear plastic purse with some treasures in it that she lovingly gathered and placed there so she would always have them. In spite of the fact that the purse was clear, I didn’t know what she had in there really. But the purse was likely to go with us on errands, to Grammy’s, and even to the gym babysitting service.

Sadly, it was this last place that was the end of the purse. The clear plastic purse filled with my daughter’s treasures did not make it out of the kid’s club in her cute little chubby hands. When we realized that we didn’t have it, we went back in to retrieve it. But it was gone. Off to the home of some other mom who would have to deal with Hayden’s stuff.

Hayden was very upset, understandably. So in one of my rare attempts to be a nurturing mom I told her I was sorry and asked her what was in the purse. Thankfully I was facing away from her when my little magpie listed her losses.

“My rubber chicken, my piece of string” pause here for sob, “my broken button, my rocks.” the list went on and on. I was both driving and trying so hard not to laugh that I choked a little, and the coughing fit that ensued almost ran us off the road.

So as I look around at all the stuff that comes and goes here, I think, does any of this stuff really matter? What would I grab if there were a wild fire and I only had 15 minutes to grab what was important? Aside from my computer, phone, and iPad, I have a hard time coming up with much.

Well…the earthquake kit since all the paperwork is in there.…Oh, and the car keys because how will I drive away without those? And my jewelry because those pieces  literally are the family jewels.

Okay, okay, I guess I would grab some stuff but I don’t think I would be stuffing the car full or anything. Or would I? I am all non-materialistic here writing my blog, but I suspect I may be harboring a few rubber chickens of my own if push came to shove. What’s worse is that I’ll be all panicky about it because I didn’t have a plan and just start grabbing everything, ultimately forgetting what stuff was important in the first place.

Well, the good news is I don’t have to worry about something like that actually happening. I live in Southern California.