I totally get it. I have moved to a larger house, and finally, have space. Theoretically, anyway.
But there's still stuff that hangs around even though I don't *really* like it all that much.
I've had to chuck some of it, because of needing to make room for a new cat, and also having to de-mothify a room where a lot of the <stuff> wound up. I still dread to consider a lot of the miniscule hoohah collected in maybe a dozen boxes, shoebox-size and smaller. Horrifying.
Wonderful essay as always. Speaking of old "stuff", is there any way to revisit the Pain archives now that the webpage has expired? I read through and saved many of those artist's statements during the pandemic, and would hate to see them lost.
Almost all the old political cartoons and accompanying artist's statements are collected in two books: "Why Do They Kill Me?" and "Twilight of the Assholes," both by Fantagraphics.
_Why Do They Kill Me_ seems waaay too on-target these days. I thought that insanity was in the past, but I guess it's been dormant, like syphilis, which does go away, for a while.
I recently heard of an interesting-sounding book (whose title I've forgotten)arguing that history is mostly told in terms of progressive movements, although in fact reactionary movements have been at least as important. We're in a reactionary period right now. Luckily the people in charge of it are almost literally unimaginably fucking stupid so we might feebly hope they'll blow it for themselves and self-destruct before they irrevocably wreck the economy and world geopolitical order and entire biosphere.
My takeaway from _Fargo_ was that while you expect a criminal to cause harm with his amoral cleverness, the dumbass criminal fucks things up worse with amoral stupidity.
Another wonderful essay. Thank you for posing the questions, for your knowledge and ability to draw from the past, to ricochet from ancient Egypt to outer space two million years from now. And for your humor and humility, always.
I've moved so many times and left so many things behind, but only missed furniture and kitchen supplies that are hard to replace in the new location. I had thought that e-readers might make deciding which few books to keep now obsolete, but my Kindle blinked out yesterday due to an update and I'm not so sure anymore.
I loved this, Tim. Thanks for writing it. I stored my things at my sister's place from 2016-2024 and, when I finally sorted through it, surprised myself by throwing away or donating a third of it. The old photos, old art, poof. I ended up being really grossed out by Old Me (sweet, idealistic, prone to drinking too much wine in one sitting) and couldn't get rid of her quickly enough. But I felt sad about it afterward. In middle school, we got evicted a few times in a row so that by the end of that I only had a shoeboxful of sentimental items. After that I started to get wary of being attached to material stuff, even the magical objects. ✨
I'm thankful for having moved twice in the last 8 years, and yet still fill find myself trying to shed more. My new place is just about a 1/4 smaller than the last, and so I'm working on removing 1/4 of the larger items. One dresser I acquired in Minneapolis in 1993-ish. It has a mid-century feel, but not high-end. The top is stained beyond repair, and the drawers are for some reason so short in depth that you can't reasonably store clothes in it. I ended up re-purposing it as a misc. storage cabinet - candles in one drawer, judaica in another, one drawer for all the black corded chargers I would never match to their original appliance again. When my kids were little, I stored all the "bitty" toys in the bottom two drawers - spinning tops, plastic disc flyers, tiny cards, games akin to jacks. (Confession, they are still in those bottom two drawers.) I've dragged it from home to home, always intending to replace the mismatched handles and paint it a bright color, its mass reminding me of the 24-year-old I was before I was married, and then a parent, and then divorced, and then an empty-nester. In my new place, I thought out loud to my young adult son that I was ready to pass it on to the Goodwill gods because I just couldn't find a place for it to fit in the new house. To my surprise, he pleaded for me to to keep it, because "that's where the toys are." So now I'm searching for the spot it fits in, wondering who the next generation to find the toys will be.
Brilliant. Exceeds even George Carlin's "A place for my stuff," my previous gold standard on the subject. Am considering printing and saving this but then I'd just have more stuff. Bravo, TK.
Really, this is a masterpiece and so insightful. I've been forced, through divorce and a cross-country move, to shed 90% of my 'stuff.' What you said about 'things' being reminders is so true. I get by without my old things but I still wish I could be around them sometimes, to have that lens through which to see my former self/selves. Thank you, Tim.
À wonderful essay. In the end I threw out my parents stuff except my Mom’s artwork. I am getting. Ready to move again and I’m thinking…the China needs to go . It was an important gift left to me from my Mom in a box I have never opened. Now if I owned a Van Gogh….
Wonderful essay. I relate to the idea that some objects are memories that I can't recover without the visual reminder. I have a weak memory in most senses (auditory, aroma, taste) but can manage with visual reminders.
The thing I keep trying to remind myself when deciding to keep something is that by making too many things important, I miss some things that are really important. I don't think I'll ever get there, but I'm trying to focus and make decisions.
I recall laughingly discussing "Swedish Death Cleansing" with my mom during COVID in an effort to pare down her 'stuff' while she was alive, terrified that I'd have to do it alone once she was gone. All the years of discussing the Christmas Cape Cod china... her worst fears that I wouldn't want to forever lug around 10 place settings came true. In the end I kept only the most important piece: the gravy boat.
Oh so much beauty here. My husband is sitting next to me in a Gaetano’s Pharmacy ball cap, inherited from his pharmacist Dad who once, long ago, filled prescriptions there.
As he moved out of our family home, while my father divested himself of items of his and my late mother's, distributing them among his children and grandchildren, he said that he had come to respect the Buddhist monks who owned nothing but their garments and a wooden bowl that they used to feed themselves and collect alms. Several years later, when he passed away in a retirement home, we discovered a DVD collection that ran into the many hundreds of disks.
I have purged belongings each time I've moved over the last 30 years--old letters, errant creative writing, books, legacy media--and invariably I regret it. Typically the thing missed can't easily be replaced or, like my LP collection, would be too much hassle and expense to do so.
I'm also now the family collector. I have all of the slides and photos from my grandparents and parents--all of whom were avid shutterbugs. I have all of the extant letters and documents from my ancestors going back to the early 19th Century. I've invested in several fire safes for these. Since I have no children and none of my nieces or nephews seem interested in taking over as curator of the family history, it isn't clear why I keep it all. But, like you, I would not want to extinguish the history in those items by throwing them out.
I have fantasies of the traveling light life that you mention, but I am now 57 and recognize that the stuff I've amassed is not to keep the world at bay but my way of interacting with it. I like the stuff. Particularly books, photos, and memorabilia from concerts or shows or experiences remind me of people whose work I admire and whom I love. So, it stays. Fortunately, I have room. For now.
Oh, how true, how true. I am in the midst of all of this--in fact only moments before reading this I lugged three boxes into my apartment so I can "go through" them.
I highly recommend "Travels with Lizbeth", by the late Lars Eighner. It's a memoir about a five-year period when the author and his dog were homeless. Eighner has a chapter called "On Dumpster Diving" that was widely anthologized. Here's a short excerpt from that chapter:
Many times in my travels I have lost everything but the clothes I was wearing and Lizbeth. The things I find in Dumpsters, the love letters and ragdolls of so many lives, remind me of this lesson. Now I hardly pick up a thing without envisioning the time I will cast it away. This I think is a healthy state of mind. Almost everything I have now has already been cast out at least once, proving that what I own is valueless to someone.
Anyway, I find my desire to grab for the gaudy bauble has been largely sated. I think this is an attitude I share with the very wealthy—we both know there is plenty more where what we have came from. Between us are the rat-race millions who have confounded their selves with the objects they grasp and who nightly scavenge the cable channels looking for they know not what.
here is a sentence I deleted from this essay because the paragraph it was in just didn't belong but I preserve it here for as Bonus Content: "A trip to any Goodwill gives you a vertiginous, sickening glimpse of the unimaginably vast mass of Stuff recirculating out there—air filters and subwoofers and wine fines, popcorn poppers, foot massagers and litter genies, ceramic pumpkins and cactus lamps and plush feces, Nerf Blasters, Lite Brite and The Book of Waffles."
I know what you mean. I get a vertiginous, sickening feeling every time I step into my garage and look at all the storage totes stacked up in the back.
Hey, I was thinking about this the other day! Remember when I interviewed you and you were like, "This is too long, no one will read this," and then you left a comment on the interview itself, stating your horrified-ness that you had failed to adequately discuss Charon's unrequited love for Pluto? That was fun, no sarcasm intended there.
I totally get it. I have moved to a larger house, and finally, have space. Theoretically, anyway.
But there's still stuff that hangs around even though I don't *really* like it all that much.
I've had to chuck some of it, because of needing to make room for a new cat, and also having to de-mothify a room where a lot of the <stuff> wound up. I still dread to consider a lot of the miniscule hoohah collected in maybe a dozen boxes, shoebox-size and smaller. Horrifying.
Wonderful essay as always. Speaking of old "stuff", is there any way to revisit the Pain archives now that the webpage has expired? I read through and saved many of those artist's statements during the pandemic, and would hate to see them lost.
Almost all the old political cartoons and accompanying artist's statements are collected in two books: "Why Do They Kill Me?" and "Twilight of the Assholes," both by Fantagraphics.
_Why Do They Kill Me_ seems waaay too on-target these days. I thought that insanity was in the past, but I guess it's been dormant, like syphilis, which does go away, for a while.
I recently heard of an interesting-sounding book (whose title I've forgotten)arguing that history is mostly told in terms of progressive movements, although in fact reactionary movements have been at least as important. We're in a reactionary period right now. Luckily the people in charge of it are almost literally unimaginably fucking stupid so we might feebly hope they'll blow it for themselves and self-destruct before they irrevocably wreck the economy and world geopolitical order and entire biosphere.
My takeaway from _Fargo_ was that while you expect a criminal to cause harm with his amoral cleverness, the dumbass criminal fucks things up worse with amoral stupidity.
Another wonderful essay. Thank you for posing the questions, for your knowledge and ability to draw from the past, to ricochet from ancient Egypt to outer space two million years from now. And for your humor and humility, always.
I've moved so many times and left so many things behind, but only missed furniture and kitchen supplies that are hard to replace in the new location. I had thought that e-readers might make deciding which few books to keep now obsolete, but my Kindle blinked out yesterday due to an update and I'm not so sure anymore.
I loved this, Tim. Thanks for writing it. I stored my things at my sister's place from 2016-2024 and, when I finally sorted through it, surprised myself by throwing away or donating a third of it. The old photos, old art, poof. I ended up being really grossed out by Old Me (sweet, idealistic, prone to drinking too much wine in one sitting) and couldn't get rid of her quickly enough. But I felt sad about it afterward. In middle school, we got evicted a few times in a row so that by the end of that I only had a shoeboxful of sentimental items. After that I started to get wary of being attached to material stuff, even the magical objects. ✨
Am I supposed to believe you're not still sweet and idealistic?
I feel like I'm old and cantankerous!
I'm thankful for having moved twice in the last 8 years, and yet still fill find myself trying to shed more. My new place is just about a 1/4 smaller than the last, and so I'm working on removing 1/4 of the larger items. One dresser I acquired in Minneapolis in 1993-ish. It has a mid-century feel, but not high-end. The top is stained beyond repair, and the drawers are for some reason so short in depth that you can't reasonably store clothes in it. I ended up re-purposing it as a misc. storage cabinet - candles in one drawer, judaica in another, one drawer for all the black corded chargers I would never match to their original appliance again. When my kids were little, I stored all the "bitty" toys in the bottom two drawers - spinning tops, plastic disc flyers, tiny cards, games akin to jacks. (Confession, they are still in those bottom two drawers.) I've dragged it from home to home, always intending to replace the mismatched handles and paint it a bright color, its mass reminding me of the 24-year-old I was before I was married, and then a parent, and then divorced, and then an empty-nester. In my new place, I thought out loud to my young adult son that I was ready to pass it on to the Goodwill gods because I just couldn't find a place for it to fit in the new house. To my surprise, he pleaded for me to to keep it, because "that's where the toys are." So now I'm searching for the spot it fits in, wondering who the next generation to find the toys will be.
Brilliant. Exceeds even George Carlin's "A place for my stuff," my previous gold standard on the subject. Am considering printing and saving this but then I'd just have more stuff. Bravo, TK.
Really, this is a masterpiece and so insightful. I've been forced, through divorce and a cross-country move, to shed 90% of my 'stuff.' What you said about 'things' being reminders is so true. I get by without my old things but I still wish I could be around them sometimes, to have that lens through which to see my former self/selves. Thank you, Tim.
À wonderful essay. In the end I threw out my parents stuff except my Mom’s artwork. I am getting. Ready to move again and I’m thinking…the China needs to go . It was an important gift left to me from my Mom in a box I have never opened. Now if I owned a Van Gogh….
Wonderful essay. I relate to the idea that some objects are memories that I can't recover without the visual reminder. I have a weak memory in most senses (auditory, aroma, taste) but can manage with visual reminders.
The thing I keep trying to remind myself when deciding to keep something is that by making too many things important, I miss some things that are really important. I don't think I'll ever get there, but I'm trying to focus and make decisions.
I recall laughingly discussing "Swedish Death Cleansing" with my mom during COVID in an effort to pare down her 'stuff' while she was alive, terrified that I'd have to do it alone once she was gone. All the years of discussing the Christmas Cape Cod china... her worst fears that I wouldn't want to forever lug around 10 place settings came true. In the end I kept only the most important piece: the gravy boat.
Oh so much beauty here. My husband is sitting next to me in a Gaetano’s Pharmacy ball cap, inherited from his pharmacist Dad who once, long ago, filled prescriptions there.
As he moved out of our family home, while my father divested himself of items of his and my late mother's, distributing them among his children and grandchildren, he said that he had come to respect the Buddhist monks who owned nothing but their garments and a wooden bowl that they used to feed themselves and collect alms. Several years later, when he passed away in a retirement home, we discovered a DVD collection that ran into the many hundreds of disks.
I have purged belongings each time I've moved over the last 30 years--old letters, errant creative writing, books, legacy media--and invariably I regret it. Typically the thing missed can't easily be replaced or, like my LP collection, would be too much hassle and expense to do so.
I'm also now the family collector. I have all of the slides and photos from my grandparents and parents--all of whom were avid shutterbugs. I have all of the extant letters and documents from my ancestors going back to the early 19th Century. I've invested in several fire safes for these. Since I have no children and none of my nieces or nephews seem interested in taking over as curator of the family history, it isn't clear why I keep it all. But, like you, I would not want to extinguish the history in those items by throwing them out.
I have fantasies of the traveling light life that you mention, but I am now 57 and recognize that the stuff I've amassed is not to keep the world at bay but my way of interacting with it. I like the stuff. Particularly books, photos, and memorabilia from concerts or shows or experiences remind me of people whose work I admire and whom I love. So, it stays. Fortunately, I have room. For now.
Oh, how true, how true. I am in the midst of all of this--in fact only moments before reading this I lugged three boxes into my apartment so I can "go through" them.
--Scrapbooks
--Letters to me from Mom
--Mom's writing
With miles to go before I sleep...
I highly recommend "Travels with Lizbeth", by the late Lars Eighner. It's a memoir about a five-year period when the author and his dog were homeless. Eighner has a chapter called "On Dumpster Diving" that was widely anthologized. Here's a short excerpt from that chapter:
Many times in my travels I have lost everything but the clothes I was wearing and Lizbeth. The things I find in Dumpsters, the love letters and ragdolls of so many lives, remind me of this lesson. Now I hardly pick up a thing without envisioning the time I will cast it away. This I think is a healthy state of mind. Almost everything I have now has already been cast out at least once, proving that what I own is valueless to someone.
Anyway, I find my desire to grab for the gaudy bauble has been largely sated. I think this is an attitude I share with the very wealthy—we both know there is plenty more where what we have came from. Between us are the rat-race millions who have confounded their selves with the objects they grasp and who nightly scavenge the cable channels looking for they know not what.
I am sorry for them.
here is a sentence I deleted from this essay because the paragraph it was in just didn't belong but I preserve it here for as Bonus Content: "A trip to any Goodwill gives you a vertiginous, sickening glimpse of the unimaginably vast mass of Stuff recirculating out there—air filters and subwoofers and wine fines, popcorn poppers, foot massagers and litter genies, ceramic pumpkins and cactus lamps and plush feces, Nerf Blasters, Lite Brite and The Book of Waffles."
I know what you mean. I get a vertiginous, sickening feeling every time I step into my garage and look at all the storage totes stacked up in the back.
Hey, I was thinking about this the other day! Remember when I interviewed you and you were like, "This is too long, no one will read this," and then you left a comment on the interview itself, stating your horrified-ness that you had failed to adequately discuss Charon's unrequited love for Pluto? That was fun, no sarcasm intended there.