Have you noticed that more people are shopping for second-hand goods these days? With lots more people shopping at Goodwill, St. Vinnies and Savers these days, seems like the pickings are getting a little slim.
That’s why I’m starting a campaign to get people to clean out their closets and garages and donate stuff they’re not using.
Around this time of year, every discount store runs ads for plastic storage containers. You just got a big ol’ pile of new stuff for Christmas and now you need someplace to put it, right?
Come on, let go of some of your old stuff. Give it away and let someone else have a chance to use it.
In the 1940s, the average American house was around 1100 square feet, usually for four people. Where did they put all their stuff?
The answer is: they didn’t have too much stuff. And apparently, they spent a lot of time taking care of what they did own.
Last year, Laura gave me a copy of “The ‘Good Housekeeping’ Housekeeping Book”, circa 1947, containing instructions for such important tasks as how to remove grease stains from wallpaper (use fuller’s earth) and how to service your zeolite water softener. (Actually, zeolite seems to still be used in water softeners, but who knew?) Every time I look at this book, another seemingly archaic chore jumps out at me. Yesterday I found stain removal instructions for Argyrol, Mercurochrome, paregoric and silver nitrate. Huh? I had to look up Argyrol to even find out what it was.
I’m not exactly advocating going back to those days.
It seems that the custodial duties of a post-war era housewife ranged from mundane to utterly mind-numbing. The minutiae of keeping up appearances must have been simply overwhelming. And what if – heaven forbid – a clean house and a well-cared-for family weren’t enough satisfaction for you? What if you had ideas about the world outside of your domestic realm? Middle America was not your place if you were a rebel or an intellect.
I have a collection of household objects from that time, among them an American Beauty iron that has no thermostatic control. To control the temperature, you simply unplugged it when it got too hot for whatever fabric you were ironing. Definitely an improvement over a flatiron that had to be heated on the stove, but a little scary if you forgot and left it on while you were trying to get the Argyrol out of your sheets.
A friend of mine has kept nearly all the clothes he’s owned as an adult. He is not a particularly young person, so his old shirts and pants and shoes and coats take up most of the room in his four closets. Unless he can bring himself to get rid of some of the things he no longer wears, he’ll have to move to a bigger house soon.
Another friend nearly lost her house to a wildfire a few years ago: the fire crew cut a fire line fifty feet off the back of their lot and for days they didn’t know if their house was still standing. She said that just the idea that they might lose everything was somehow freeing for her.
I experienced something similar: a few summers ago, as a fire made its way from the west edge of town toward our neighborhood, we got the word telling us to be ready to evacuate. I almost filled my car with our photo albums, the immediate lesson being that I needed to either scan some photos, or else get a bigger car. I walked around the house, wondering what else I should take, but in the end put very little else into the car. Truly, almost all our possessions are expendable to some degree or other.
Better than burning, though, would be to practice “catch and release” shopping, letting your unused possessions swim back into the economy. Our society defines us by our property, and that makes it hard to let go. But try to think of cleaning your garage or closet as a refinement rather than as a reduction.
Trust me, life will go on.