For several months I’ve been in the process of de-cluttering and generally getting rid of stuff. But that has stalled, for reasons that are not entirely clear. And it looks like de-cluttering is going to get somewhat harder from this point forward.
Swedish Death Cleaning
With apologies to Marie Kondo, there ain’t a whole lot of “sparking joy” amongst the stuff I have left to deal with. So my de-cluttering is less a process of finding what sparks joy, and more a process of döstädning, or Swedish death cleaning.
Not so much skimming the cream as shoveling the sludge.
But even that has stalled.
As it turns out, getting rid of the big, reasonably valuable possessions was the easy part. For me, at least. What has me paralyzed now is the “smalls”: The little bits of this-‘n’-that. With the poster child being the inevitable coffee can filled with mixed screws, bolts, nails and other fasteners.
I’m not quite sure why I find this part of decluttering so hard. So this post is an exploration of that. With the hope that I’ll find some efficient strategy for getting rid of clutter-in-the-form-of-many-small-items.
The process so far: Big stuff is not a problem.
In the past year, I have managed to give away or otherwise get rid of:
- A car/tomato dehydrator (Post G21-028).
- A 4’x8′ utility trailer
- Exercise equipment including:
- Elliptical
- Stationary bike
- Resistance training station
- Multiple power tools
- Multiple non-power tools.
- Sewing machine.
- Computer monitor/TV
- And a bunch of other stuff.
All of the above held some significant value for somebody else. The car went to an Afghan immigrant family. The trailer went to my in-laws, currently rehabbing a house. The stationary bike went to a woman who needed one solidly enough built for an overweight person. And so on.
As long as I was willing to part with it for free, there was a willing taker. As to why the “free” part isn’t so hard any more, for me, see Post #1653, The life table as the cure for lucralgia.
At the minimum, these transactions had the appearance of creating value, for somebody, even if I’m not sure how much value was actually created. “Free” is unlike any other price. People will take something, for free, even if they have no clear need for it, or no high-valued use for it.
So, as an economist, the only thing I’ll say for giving stuff away is that it gets it out the door and makes it somebody else’s problem. Whether these objects have actually gone on to a valued use is more-or-less a matter of faith. I do have the occasional pang of conscience over this. But not enough to stop me from using my local “Buy Nothing” and “Freecycle” groups as ways to get rid of stuff.
In a nutshell, giving stuff to willing takers is a straight-up guilt-avoidance exercise. It means I’m not the one who eventually chucks it in the dumpster. If, in addition, it manages to do some good for somebody, that’s gravy.
Little stuff: Decision overload and disposal-phobia.
Between the process described above, and recycling (e.g., reducing objects to scrap metal and taking that to the transfer station), I would say that I have considerably reduced the mass and volume of my possessions.
The problem is, I have hardly even made a dent in the number of my possessions.
For every car, there’s a couple-dozen obsolete-but-still-functioning electronic devices. For every full box of screws that somebody wants, there are twenty mostly-empty boxes of fasteners that nobody will take. For every functional sewing machine, there are twenty-odd spools of piping, ribbons, elastic, and every other oddball sewing aid you can think of. For every major power tool, there’s a box of assorted plumbing, electrical, or other hardware parts.
Electrical cables. Don’t even get me started. I have five-gallon tote that’s essentially a history of modern electronics technology in one tangled mass. USB cables, power cords, external drive cables, video and audio cables, CAT5 cables, coax cables.
I don’t think computers have had parallel ports for a couple of decades now. But I surely have at least one parallel printer cable somewhere in that mass. Likely sitting right next to the serial cable. Because you never know when you might need one of those. And they’re real hard to find, new.
In a world where phones went wireless decades ago, of course I have phone cables. Any kind you can think of. And jacks and connectors. And the specialized tool for putting the connectors on the cables. Because you never know when you might need some of that stuff. Plus, I paid good money for that. And it’s a sin to throw away perfectly good stuff. Or something.
Office supplies. Hygiene products. Miscellaneous hardware. Single-use tools. An entire stack of filters … for a vacuum cleaner that died several years ago.
As I ponder this mass of assorted bits of junk, I think I’m getting an inkling as to why I find it so hard to get rid of it.
1: It’s decision-intensive. Pick up a shoe box with 50 assorted items in it, and … you have to make 50 individual transactions. Starting with “What is this?”, progressing to “Might I ever have a need for this?”, moving on to “Does this go with something else I own?”, moving along to “Would anyone else want this?”, and ending up with “Can I recycle it”, and the logical counterpart “Is it OK to toss this in the trash”.
2: It inevitably means putting perfectly functional stuff into the trash. Or, at the minimum, putting things with potentially usable raw materials into the general trash stream. The quintessential example would be an old computer power cord. The cord may be obsolete, the copper in it could be re-used, if I could just figure out how to recycle it.
3: I’m fighting entropy. A lot of the small clutter consists of items that could be useful to somebody. But there’s no way to accomplish that transaction. In effect, modern retail takes large quantities of pure goods (e.g., boxes of identical items), distributes them out to individuals, who them mix those together into an unusable mass of clutter. In the same way that you can’t unmix the milk from your coffee, and put it back in the carton, there’s no practical way to take this mass of small, mixed, usable items and separate it into usable pieces.
And you know what? I’m just not very good at any of that.
This is the complete opposite of big-ticket giveaway döstädning. Getting rid of the little stuff requires lots of effort and offers almost no reward. I’m not freeing up a lot of space. I’m not creating a lot of value for anybody else. In the end, I’m taking hundreds of what once were usable items, and making the positive decision to chuck them, individually, into the trash.
No wonder I’m having such a hard time with it.
New rules: Less Kondo, more Kafka.
I need a change in orientation. There has to be a quicker, more systematic approach to getting rid of all the little bits of junk.
Up to now, I’ve been seeking items that spark joy in somebody else. Even if I didn’t want them, I could see where somebody would find some value in them. And that value is how I got them out of my life.
Practically speaking, that’s not a bad place to start.
But now I have to admit that the up-beat, value-creating phase of de-cluttering has run its course. And now it needs to undergo a metamorphosis, to become what is, in effect, a much darker, value-destroying enterprise.
Even if that value is purely imaginary (“Those plated brass hinges should be good for something!). Even if it’s only in my head (“That 0.5 megapixel camera is in like-new condition!) Even if its based on specious sunk-cost arguments (“I paid good money for that phone cable!”)
It’s a product life-cycle-meets-circle-of-life kind of thing. Either I toss the crap out now, of my own free will, or somebody will toss it out after I’m gone. And they won’t thank me for it. Either way, it’s going to end up in the same place. It’s just a question of facing up to it.
Here are the new rules.
1: Decide on an entire class of objects, when possible. I don’t have to go through my five-gallon tote of old computer cables, and decide on each one. Wire of all types is recyclable at the Fairfax County I-66 transfer station. I can make one decision — to dump the entire five gallons worth at the transfer station. Done. And if, at some point in the future, I need to buy a cable? Well, I will.
2: Once chance to be given away. After that, toss it. Right now, I have the HEPA filters at the top of this posting listed on my local “Buy Nothing” group. And if nobody wants them? I’m going to chuck them. In theory, I could flog them somewhere else. But at some point, that’s just another way of saying I’ll never get rid of them. So either somebody in that group wants them, or into the trash they go. Rinse and repeat.
3: Do one complete sweep for Fairfax hazardous waste disposal. I’ve slowly been accumulating items that probably need special treatment in Fairfax County. In addition to toxic items, these include things that should not go into the trash, such as disposable propane cylinders, and fluorescent lights. I need one complete sweep of the house for all the items that ought to be disposed of in that fashion and just get it done.
4: Find a scrap metal dealer who will take small metal objects. Arguably my biggest hangup is small metal items. I just hate tossing metal into the trash. Random metal objects should not go into the recycling (the machinery is designed to handle cans and such, not pieces of pipe.) Even though Fairfax County recovers metals (as possible) after incinerating household waste, I doubt they do that efficiently. And, while Fairfax will take large pieces of scrap (e.g., white goods), they have no provision for accepting something like a coffee can full of screws. That said, the internet tells me that some scrap metal dealers will take items like that. If I can locate one, that will solve a lot of problems.
Conclusion
I don’t know if this helped you at all, but writing this down helped me get my head on straight.
Up to now, I’d been living in a death cleaning paradise. But it was fool’s paradise. Sure, it was going like clockwork. But not because I have a knack for it. I was going well because I was giving away things of value. Once you get over the “giving away” part, of course that’s easy.
Now comes the hard part: Dealing with things of no value. That requires a different mindset entirely. I’ll do what I reasonably can, but a lot of potentially functional stuff is going to end up in the trash. That’s just the way the product life cycle works.
Time to get over it and get on with my life.
