Why Stuff Dot Life?
I don’t think of myself as a shop-a-holic. It’s just gotten super easy for me to buy things online. Almost every day, I come home to a package. Usually it’s something completely utilitarian. A gym locker. Tomato stakes. Vitamins.
Oh, who am I kidding? Yes, I buy my vitamins online. But more often it’s something like a new sweater from L. L. Bean or a pair of fresh Taos sandals from Zappos.
Here’s the thing, though. I should be getting rid of stuff. The house I live in, I moved into it when I was 33 years old. And it’s crammed full of all the things you acquire in 30 years of marriage and raising children. Now I’m 60, and like most other baby boomers, I’m starting to think about downsizing.
Me and my friends, our kids are finished college and off pursuing their dreams — and we’re thinking about pursuing ours. Maybe Asheville, maybe Austin, maybe the Hudson Valley, it doesn’t matter. Wherever we go, whenever we go — and it could be years — we know sooner or later we’re going to have to put our houses on the market. And we’ve been warned: the last thing house buyers want to see is clutter.
So we’re going to have to start getting rid of junk.
The other day, my husband went upstairs. And what did we find? Besides my wedding dress and a baby quilt I made in 1988? It was actually quite mortifying: a motley collection of expired suitcases and maternity clothes from the 1980’s, an ancient epoch when women hid, rather than flaunted, their baby bumps. Before visiting the attic, I was thinking yard sale. Afterwards, dumpster. And let’s not even talk about the dungeon — I mean the basement.
And that’s where it starts, my idea for this podcast, Stuff Dot Life. With these two competing impulses. To acquire shiny new things, and then — when by some magic alchemy, they turn into crap — to get rid of them.
As it happens, there’s a bestselling book on the subject, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Its author, Marie Kondo, is now an organizing superstar. Her organizing principle is so so simple you can reduce it to one sentence. Look at every object you own and if it doesn’t give you joy into the trash it goes.
And that’s an interesting place to start. Which objects bring you joy? The answers can be utterly surprising.
Like this guy met at my doctor’s office who collects witches’ brooms. You might have seen them. They’re growths on trees that look like tumbleweeds or giant bird’s nests. Wikipedia describes them as a “disease or deformity” — but this guy, Frank, loves them. He keeps them in a greenhouse, and when I asked him if he gets nervous during a storm, he told me, of course, they’re his babies. And by the way — and I have this on tape! — he worries about their safety before the safety of his wife.
But it’s not just the things that brings us joy. there’s also the sheer joy of how we get them.
And what about the things we don’t buy but are given? Objects we may not love, but remind us of some dear one. Can we throw those out?
Or shopping mistakes. How can we throw out something we just bought last winter? Or, even worse, last week?
And how about that power cord. Doesn’t that go to something?
I spent the better part of the last year fighting breast cancer and making a podcast about it with my son Noah. The Chemo Files has won two awards, one from the American Association of Cancer Research and the other from the New Jersey Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Now I’m turning my attention to the fascinating subject of stuff, and creating a podcast and a website called Stuff Dot Com. And while I may be turning my house on its side and emptying its contents into a dumpster, that’s just part of it. I’ll also be looking at the objects that worm their way into our hearts: the things in the attic we can’t throw away. Think of it as a kind of merry scavenger hunt for things and their stories. I hope you’ll play.
