
“Clutter in Basement” by Tom W. Sulcer.
Luckily, I don’t have a basement. If I did, it would probably look like his.
When I think about how much stuff I have, it boggles my mind. The third bedroom in our house is my “office,” but it’s more of a storage room. Time after time I go in there to clean it out. I start strong, but quickly run out of steam.
Getting rid of stuff is hard. It’s incredibly energy-intensive to sort through stuff and get rid of what you don’t really need. Incredibly energy-intensive.
If not for Katherine, my wife, my whole house would probably be this bad. As it stands, the chaos is largely contained to … my room.
Time after time I go in there with full hopes of redeeming the space, of separating the wheat from the chaff, of making the room useful and beautiful again. And time after time, the stuff beats me.
If I were truly free, truly strong, I would have no problem going in there and winning that fight. If my priorities were in order, my office would be, too. But they’re not, and it’s not.
I wonder if that’s why they call them “possessions,” because they own me more than I own them?