Less is More

After a visit with my mother-in-law – disclaimer: a lovely person, generous, kind, and I love her dearly – but after any visit, I always have the urge to declutter my house. My MIL saves EVERYTHING, every gift she’s ever been given. This is sort of endearing. But for me it’s claustrophobic when I see all of these gifts on display. I just want to tell her, “It’s okay to fill a box with knick-knacks and take it to Goodwill. You have my permission to get rid of those candles I gave you fifteen Christmases ago. You know, the ones that used to be purple. And fragrant. And now they’re a sickly pink, never been burned, and smell like nothing. Please toss them. It’s okay. You won’t hurt my feelings, I promise.”

“And I think I speak for at least one-hundred other people who have gifted you with a knick-knack over the past sixty years. We give you permission to pare down the collection. Please.”

This Thanksgiving, we spent the holiday with my husband’s mother. In her tiny two-bedroom condo. She prepared a feast for nineteen in her spacious kitchen with no counter space due to the above mentioned knick-knacks. “Really, Mom, it’s okay to weed your cookbook collection. You don’t need a separate bookcase in the kitchen just for cookbooks.”

My two sisters-in-law and I spent over an hour washing pots, pans, serving dishes, real silverware (can’t put the knives in the dishwasher), crystal water glasses, crystal wine glasses, and all the specialized silver serving ware that lovingly cradles the serving dishes. Whoever dried had to immediately figure out where to put each item away because there was no counter space. Our MIL loves dishes. She has probably six sets of china (talking about twelve place settings each) and dozens of tea sets, yet she admits that she loves to go to HomeGoods and buy – you guessed it – dishes. Her china cabinet is so full that I’m waiting for the shelves to collapse. “It’s okay to give away the dusty ones you don’t use, Mom. Really. It’s okay.”

My youngest daughter is allergic to my MIL’s new cat. I asked Mom if she had any sinus medicine. She said, “Sure,” and looked through her medicine cabinet. Five boxes of very expired medicine (twenty year-old Benedryl) found their way into the trash before she found something recent that my daughter could take. A glance under Mom’s sink revealed at least twenty more boxes of assorted medicines. I once asked her (trying to sound helpful) if she would like me to organize under her sinks. She assured me she had done it recently. I glanced at the twenty half-empty bottles of assorted lotions – several I remember from her last house, fifteen years ago – and said, “If you say so.”

Clutter is in the eye of the beholder. Clearly my sweet MIL doesn’t mind or notice that she has an awful lot of stuff in her little condo. She loves her dishes, books, jewelry -- her stuff, a lifetime of collecting things. I grew up with clutter, dust, and unfinished home improvement projects. Too much stuff in too small of a space bothers me. I feel claustrophobic in her condo. Or in my own mother’s house. I’ve finally realized there’s a connection between the age of a person and the amount of stuff they own. If the person is married, double that amount. Kind of a scary thought.

My mother says she’s “downsizing.” This means she keeps trying to give away her knick-knacks (I keep saying, “No thanks”) but then she can’t resist an antiques store and comes home with a new painting – she loves art. Clearly she doesn’t understand the concept of downsizing.

Knick-knacks are an unavoidable part of adulthood. Own your own home? Get married? Have kids? Travel much? Guess what – you start to collect knick-knacks. And if you lose a family member, you’ll inherit their knick-knacks. If people know you collect something, especially if it’s décor-related, your collection will grow exponentially. My husband is sentimental about ‘things’ – yes, there is a packrat gene – and rarely throws things away. He doesn’t like to replace things, even when they’re threadbare or broken, well past their ‘use by’ date like the pharmacy in his mother’s bathroom. If an item was a gift, inherited, or crafted by our kids, we must keep it. I admit that I regularly purge things I don’t think he’ll miss because too much stuff gives me anxiety. If we don’t use it, don’t need it, or don’t even know what it is, why should it continue to take up valuable space in our home?

I read an article recently that the stress level of a woman, whether homemaker or employed outside the home, is directly related to the number of things inside the home. The more things women have to take care of, the more anxiety they feel. The woman who wrote the article had decided to purge her kids’ playroom, which was always a mess. Her children didn’t even spend time in the room, even when she attempted to organize their toys in containers (yes, we’ve all tried that). So she pared it down to just a few select toys. Result: the kids loved it. They played in their playroom. Imagine that. And her stress level went down. Imagine that.

I’m not saying we should all go for the Spartan look. Minimalist-Zen sort of décor makes a home feel like a museum, in my opinion. But there is such a thing as too much. I like to think that I’m trying to find a happy medium. I gave away my basket collection when I started collecting pottery. I framed one or two things each of my kids painted and, over time, gradually tossed the rest of their artwork. Especially my oldest daughter’s preschool art that involved tons of glitter. I box up sentimental knick-knacks because they don’t all need to be on display. I rotate them. Ditto for the books. (Hey, I’m an author, I can’t help the book fetish.) I donate clothes as soon as the kids outgrow them. There is no real need to save everything. On the contrary, if we hold on to too much, be it possessions or emotional baggage, we become weighed down. Less is more. Less is freeing.

Love you, Mom. If you’re reading this, you’re fine just the way you are. But it you ever get the urge to clear off your kitchen counters, I’d be happy to help.