It being Sunday, I would like to explore with you the topic of shedding possessions: the need to do so, the process and the psychology of it. (Well, it may only be my psychology, but you never know what more general inferences it might yield.)
The need for us - me and WotN - to shed possessions arises because of the prospect of moving to a smaller house. A perfectly practical matter, one might think, but with all kinds of hidden emotional depths. So we start, each in his and her own way. I did a cull of my academic books, to the tune of possibly a third of them. Against expectations I found it no big deal. I even enjoyed the sense of producing a leaner and fitter collection. But then I started on papers – papers in the folders in my filing cabinet and in one or two overspill locations, up in the attic and elsewhere in the house. At the same time, Adèle and I began to cast our eye on various types of objects here and there: old suitcases, their contents, ornaments and associated knick-knacks, furniture, gramophone records, tapes, videos, clothes, other books, family memorabilia, etc. etc.
At a certain point the truth hits you in the shape of a question: how do we come to have so much stuff? It's everywhere. It has proliferated in every room and into every available space. The process of thinning it out seems - even now, many weeks in - endless. But I know the answer to the question. In 1983 we moved from a smaller into a larger house (this one), and I remember the feeling it gave us of having so much room now into which to expand. We did so accordingly, and continued to. Then, when our two daughters moved out, the occasions about five years apart, we colonized the spaces they had vacated. And so it went on. Now there's this enormous heap, you just can't believe; or that, at least, is how it seems once you start trying to imagine yourself and your stuff in the new place. You tear up, you shred, you throw away, you take to the charity shop, you phone up a daughter to see if she still wants what's in that box. It goes on and on.
Worse still, I find it taking over my head. Am I beginning to enjoy getting rid of things? Undoubtedly yes. It's that leaner and fitter feeling again. Who wants a whole lot of stuff, some of which one had forgotten one had, some of which one doesn't know why one kept, some of which one doesn't even like? What else can we toss out, tear up, give away? It becomes a need in itself - the need to bin, to part with, to destroy. I start to feel like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times - as if the movements necessitated by the process have taken me over and taken on a life of their own. More, more, more: throw, tear up, shred, give! How much decluttering have we done today? How much decluttering can we do tomorrow? Gotta keep it moving - out, out, out, more, come on... aaaargghhh.
Enough. At this rate we'll end up sitting in a nearly bare house in Cambridge, wondering what happened.
Anyway, I think that if you've lived for more than a couple of decades in the same house and it's of any large size, you should institute a custom of ridding yourself of at least one thing each day. Believe me, when a certain time comes, you won't regret it.