BlankLogo Photography

I have too much junk in my life. I sit in my small apartment and become claustrophobic from the clutter. I’m tired of the weight of it all. I’m tired of the demands my consumerism has placed on me and how it crowds out the things that are important in my life. Certainly I’ve earned it? What I have is what I’ve spent my hard-earned money on and I should therefore be proud of it, right? At one time I was. I went to the mall and bought videos and CDs. Sometimes I went to conventions and bought action figures and other miscellany to place around the house. At the time I was plunking down the bucks for all this stuff it seemed like a good idea.

Now, however, this stuff, my stuff, is a metaphorical chain around my leg. It keeps me where I am. I can’t just leave it somewhere – it has to be housed and taken care of. The sheer volume of it requires me to have a living space of a minimum size. So what to do with it? If life was like the movies, I’d have a carpet bag like Mary Poppins, you know the one, the one that could store lamps and hat stands and full-grown plants. With everything hidden away it would be so much easier to forget about, but life isn’t like that and there are two options that I see – live with it or get rid of it.

But getting rid of stuff is so much harder than one might imagine. Why? Cause it’s my stuff and I’ve become attached to it. For the most of these things I can’t even think of a reason why. I look over at my wall of bookshelves and wonder how did I become attached to The Enchanted World of Rankin and Bass or The Star Trek Encyclopedia? The simple explanation would be that they’re *mine* and therefore I am attached to them. I have no reason to hold on to either one – one I have never read and the other I have only perused as a reference to one of my favorite shows. The former is signed by someone or other I believe, but I don’t know who and the autograph really has no significance to me. But parting with them, when I spent money on them isn’t easy. And the same can be said of so many things I own.

Two of my bookshelves, floor-to-ceiling-height Ikea bookshelves, are full of books. There are hardcover, first edition, novels I painstakingly tracked down from my favorite writers and paperbacks I got for free and as gifts that I was unable to finish or was never interested in in the first place. There are reference books on witchcraft and weapons and imaginary places. There are things I’ve written and journals I’ve kept and yearbooks from my school days. All these things simply sit there, taking up space, cluttering my life, seemingly of value and personal meaning, but mostly just junk.

A third bookshelf is filled with movies. There’s my small collection of 1980′s, first generation, Transformers. I have my cameras and photography equipment. In one corner sits my large collection of rolled-up, tubed posters. There are pots and pans and cups and plates and utensils and cookware in the kitchen. I have yet more stuff in the closet hidden from view, but that I still know are there. How ever did my life get this cluttered?

It was a long time coming. I was your average, buying-will-make-me-happy consumer for a long time. That’s when most of this junk crept in and began to multiply. There was a period where I would ask myself before any frivolous purchase if I needed this collectible or that poster and the answer was always no. That simple question saved me so much money and so much clutter. I stopped buying anything I could live without. If I couldn’t see something being used, my wallet never opened and eventually I became happy window shopping but never spending. It felt better to resist the urge than to give in.

As I sit here, surrounded by all this stuff, my thoughts drift to a friend who lives with few possessions. He has necessary clothing, books required for his schooling and a few pieces of equipment he uses in his engineering studies. That’s it! “I don’t keep anything more than I can fit in the trunk of my car,” he once told me. In many ways I envy the simplicity.

But I will envy no more. It’s time to reduce the clutter. In my spare time I started making mental notes of what should stay and what should go. By no means will I ever reach John Lennon’s dream of absolutely no possessions, nor will I reduce my life to a pile of clothes, books and nothing more, but there is so much room for improvement.

Half of the books should go, I have decided. I want one less bookcase lining my wall. Of my Transformers, Optimus is no longer required, but Jetfire and probably Shockwave will stick around. Pretty much all of the posters not already on the wall can be sold off. Without my cameras I wouldn’t be taking photos, so they are safe, but the stuff in the closet is suspect. If I can’t find a good reason to keep that harmonica my uncle gave me when I was 5, it’s going to Goodwill; I’ve never used it and I never will.