My Stuff

After graduating from law school in 1974, I moved to New York City to start work. Together with two classmates, I rented a duplex on the Upper West Side. All was well until I got a call late one afternoon from one of them.

“Get up here right away.”

“What’s up?”

“Someone’s broken in. The cops are here.”

“Oh.”

So, I got on the subway and hightailed it uptown. Sure enough, our door had been kicked in, and the place was a mess.

The cops were drinking coffee and giving condolences. We had renters’ insurance, so one of them said I should inventory my stuff to see what had been taken. He could put the missing items on his report, and I could make an insurance claim for my loss.

I went up to my bedroom and looked over my belongings. It was clear that someone had rifled through them and hadn’t found anything worth stealing. This hurt my feelings a bit, but I am a truthful man, so I went down our very hip spiral stair and told the officer that nothing had been taken.

He looked at me like I had three heads. “You sure?” “Yeah.” “Hmm. Well, okay.”

In those days, I could put everything I owned into two suitcases. The aggregate value of all of it — as confirmed by the West Side’s finest burglars — was roughly zero.1

As time passed, I began accumulating stuff, first to furnish an apartment of my own and then, with Liz, to furnish and decorate the seven (soon to be eight) places in which we have lived during our life together. I am now the proud owner, jointly and severally, of a lot of stuff.

In our latest move, Liz and I are significantly downsizing, so stuff has to go. What do we do with it? What to keep, what to toss? In thinking through this process, I have been guided by The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson, an unsentimental and practical guide to getting the accumulated clutter of your life sorted so others don’t have to do it for you — or after you. The book is also, for what it’s worth, a hoot.

So, what am I doing about my personal stuff? Let’s go by categories, in ascending level of difficulty.

Clothing

Following Ms. Magnusson’s good advice, I have started with the easy stuff: my clothing, which falls into roughly three categories:

Business Attire from my prior life. Having already done some work on this category, I still have three business suits, ten or so “dress shirts” and thirty or so ties. I wear my best suit to some formal events, funerals mainly, and the rest I haven’t worn for years. Same for the shirts and ties. Given trends in menswear toward “dress casual” (for which read “slovenly plus”) I’m not sure I will ever need the two lesser suits and 90% of my ties again. So, I’ll wait to see whether the church we are returning to in Raleigh still is dress-up. If not, at least one suit (and related shirts and ties) will go.

Clothes I wear sometimes. I have “casual wear” sufficient for a short cruise or trip to someplace where I want to look at least modestly presentable. Out of three sports jackets, one should probably be jettisoned but that’s minor. A particular subcategory of interest is the numerous Orvis checked shirts that Liz has seen fit to buy for me, some of which I wear, most of which I don’t. I have thought about taking up fishing to justify this part of my wardrobe but that would increase clutter. So, disposal of some of these shirts to come.

Clothes I wear every day. In general, I have a dozen or so sports shirts and pounds of tee shirts. I also have a lot of “knock about” pants that attest to the adage, “old khakis never die, they just fray away.” And a drawer full of sweaters in various states of decline. These are the clothes I wear most days. Think “dressed by COSTCO.” The half-life of this category appears to be near infinity, and its residual value is less than zero. A trip to the dump awaits a portion of it yet to be determined.

I have footwear that fits in all of the above categories and am, in fact, a bit short here. I’m not ready to give up and do the “old guy in sneakers” routine, so I wander hither and yon furtively looking at what other men are wearing.

Books

Books do furnish a room, as the saying goes, but we are moving to a place with fewer rooms, so some of our books have to go. Getting rid of my portion of the excess has been easier than I had feared. I am keeping some books about the 2008 financial crisis and a few autographed volumes with sentimental value, but I have jettisoned everything else. What has been surprising has been how few volumes my bookish friends wanted to take off my hands. Their rooms, as is turns out, are fully furnished. Thank heavens for the Chapel Hill Library and its bookstore, unquestioning takers of what I am leaving.

My Office

Furniture is not my department, except for the desk, chair and bookcase in the room in our current place that serves — poses, might be a better word — as my office. It will be replaced by what Liz playfully calls my “Easy Bake” desk, a small expandable table that works fine and fits in our new and smaller quarters.

The mental furniture of my “office” also included my academic diplomas and professional licenses, the former of which are ancient and the latter now retired with me.2 After a long period of pondering, I scanned all of this mental furniture and, with one exception, shredded it.

These disposals were harder than clothes and books, causing something of a twinge. The bookcase survived Hurricane Floyd, but the memories remain. I can part with it because I have found it a good new home. I couldn’t part with my Davidson diploma, on sheepskin, in Latin and signed by its author, Professor John McGahey, a genuine scholar and lovely man. Sorry kids: you’ll have to deal with that one.

And so, the museum of my past has been dismantled.

Letting Go

The initial post on this site was entitled I Used to Be Somebody. Who Am I Now? Letting go of my stuff is shedding what remains of my prior life and acknowledging the realities of my new one. Guided by two wise women — Liz Smith and Margaretta Magnusson — the transition, while daunting, is turning out to be challenging and fun. Living comfortably with less is my new goal. It is, as the saying goes, a process.

Margareta Magnusson went to Valhalla earlier this year, no doubt with her affairs in order. If Swedish Death Cleaning is indicative of who she was, she died at peace after a full and happy life. I for one am working toward a comparable end. One’s reach should exceed one’s grasp, no?