JUNK-JUNKIE
Neeman A Sobhan
The last time I moved house and
was assaulted by the accumulated junk of years, I made a solemn
promise to myself never, ever, to keep anything that I didn't
foresee using the very next day. But as the irritating Mr. Know-it-all
dwelling within wise old adages would say: never say never!
Second of all, I have come to the realisation
that junk does not passively collect, it is actively created
by the passive inaction on our part to deal with it immediately.
Just as we must develop the habit of dealing with our emails
the moment we receive one or forever keep it on our files, likewise
we must decisively contend with the contents of our closets,
wardrobes, bookshelves, drawers, shoe boxes, cigarette cartons,
empty chocolate tins, the space beneath the bed or over the
headboard, under the stairs, below the bookshelf, on top of
the fridge, behind the flower pots, between the pages of books,
within the folded flaps of the warped and expensive table-tennis
table, inside the unused barbeque.........and other sundry places
where junk breeds.
And the junk flourishes with the loving care
given by our human instincts for self preservation, that is
to say, preservation of anything material connected with ourselves.
Or it could be just a lack of a sense of priority regarding
what is useful and what is useless, matched with a lack of discipline
to deal with the potentially useless even after we know that
when we store it we are basically postponing decision.
The contents of my basement and attics generally
contain mostly this category of junk: deferred objects. I have
ten bulging plastic bags and three small battered suitcases
of paper alone, ranging from the 'what the hell is this?' to
'someday, I might need this' . Same with clothes. I wear until
I wear out basically four or five sets of clothes every season
yet the rest of my ample closet houses thousands of articles
of apparel that never see the light of day and have no apparent
function except to remind me of a shopping mistake which I will
one day justify by wearing it but is too good to throw or give
away. I could arguably live out of one suitcase. In fact, all
of this year I have been a rootless traveller proving the point
that man only needs one or two change of clothes, the rest is
exaggeration, vanity and potential junk.
Simplify, less-is-more, those are the war cries
of my minimalist philosophy of life, and I have always considered
that 'Can I live without it?' is a question more spiritually
rewarding than 'who-am-I?' Yet, in spite of so much metaphysical
maturity and mockery for materialism, the junk in my home has
never abated.
Then there is the aspect of sentimentality that
governs the mental and physical junkyard of our lives. How can
you throw away anything to do with your childhood, your husband's
childhood, your children's childhood, your mother-in-law's grandmother's
childhood? How can you trash those objects from the earliest
days of your marriage ('Oh! Look darling, the screw driver from
the first tool-kit we bought at that mid-night sale at K-Mart,
remember?' Well, it is sweet and no, I don't need to have my
screws attended to, thank you) or from the earliest stages of
a hobby: first and fourth pair of expensive roller blades, lucky
skate boards, only-need-to-be-restrung-perfectly-fine squash
and tennis rackets, badminton nets wrapped around cricket wickets,
belly dancing scarves jingling to the top hat of the last of
two drum sets, tins of half used paints and varnishes, rolls
of wall paper, programme posters of the newly set-up cultural
organisation and copies of the first two issues of its magazine,
stage props, antique Olivetti typewriter, old computers, dusty
VCR's, a gap-tooth musical keyboard, speakers, the Nintendo
game at various stages of its evolution, aquariums, dog houses,
skiing gloves, trekking boots, beach towels and under water
goggles....? The mind boggles.
Then, there is the other danger: another person's
junk is our treasure. I just threw away ten pairs of mildewed
shoes, and five pairs of stilettos that overstepped the borders
of elegant discomfort, and then grabbed a heavy metal shoe display
tree from a moving friend, which then I paid someone else to
throw away. Every year, in Rome, I and my friends (in the absence
of sisters and cousins) hold a casual sari-exchange and coffee
event where we give away dozens of saris we never wear in a
drive to empty our closets, and come home with two dozen of
someone else's.
I really believe in the Feng Shui principle
that if you don't throw away old things, you cannot make room
for new things or new events to come into your home and life.
The I-might-use-it-one-day motive I know now to be the most
spurious and faulty reason to hold on to anything. If you haven't
used something in one year, just give it away, because the chances
of your ever using it diminishes with each day that passes.
And when the improbable day when you might actually need it
dawns, you will probably not find it readily, and who wants
to go through the torture of mining the old clothes bundles
madly repeating 'Eeesh! I know I had it, but where o where did
I keep it?' Its not worth it. Just let it go.
Of course, it just happens to me that the day
after I have finally given away something, say that screaming
pink silk dress that some well meaning but colour blind friend
once gave me and which I have been holding on to for years because
the silk is lovely and who knows when someone might need it
for a fancy dress or theme colour party, a friend rings up and
says they are going to a Think-Pink party and do I have something
in .....?
One of my favourite humour columnist Erma Bombeck
once mentioned a principle the human race employs when dealing
with left over food. I have forgotten how she put it, but in
essence it goes like this: when clearing the meal, the house
wife finds herself with a bit of left over, say some dessert,
which, though she knows no one is going to eat, she still cannot
bring herself to throw into the garbage. It is, after all, good
food and she is a good, God fearing human being, how can a good
woman just throw away good food? So, she goes through the elaborate
ritual of putting expensive cling paper on it and puts it in
the fridge. Every day, she and her family open the fridge and
ignore the plate, and it stays there for two more days. Then
the day after, the house wife notices a bit of fungus and clicks
her tongue, but feels relieved. Now the food is beyond eating;
now it is safe to throw away.
It's the same with my basement and attic. Not
until the dusty, grimy, stored furniture go beyond the point
of salvaging (something we promise to do) and transcend to that
stage of perfect mould and rust, can we throw it with a clear
conscience. It's the same for the cartons of school and college
books, back issues of unread but wonderful for knowledge National
Geographic, and the unsorted files, documents and warranty papers
from cars, houses, apparatus and appliances we no longer own:
not until they crawl with worms do they get a decent burial.
No more. As soon as I have waded through my
unmatched crockery and sport socks, faded pillow cases (which
could be made into pot holders) or the boxes of used wrapping
paper, old ties, glass bangles, six sets of batik dinner mats
with small stains, 100 orphaned sari blouses, tins of old coins
from countries that no longer exist and in the case of my little
plastic sack of lira and European coins, remnants of a currency
that is now defunct, and much, much more, I will streamline
my life and my cupboards to contain nothing but what is absolutely
essential. For the moment, what shall I do with the sheets of
edited, corrected copies of this article? Should I throw them
into the waste bin? What if my computer crashes, my diskette
gets lost, I change my mind about the second paragraph. Let
me just hold on to it for the moment. Next week I'll trash it.
Promise.