The Weight of Stuff: The Quality-Quantity Dilema

The end of our lease is nearing and we have no idea what to do next. For the past 4 years I have moved about every 4 months and it never gets easier. This last move up here I got rid of a lot of stuff, I mean A LOT of ridiculous and mostly useless stuff. Stuff that was weighing me down. The baggage I was carrying was overwhelming but the idea of getting rid of it was even more terrifying. Now that I let go of so much of it, I want to let go of almost all of it.

I, like many womyn today, have a semi-unhealthy relationship with clothes. I hate shopping but I love free piles. The thing that's more dangerous about free piles is that everything is a good deal so I come out with an exponential amount of stuff compared to if I went to buy clothes. Also instead of coming home with ready to wear clothes everything needs a little love; a patch on the butt, a good hand washing or cut into shorts. These little tidbits often go undone so they go from one pile of unworn clothing to another.

Luckily I have a strong support group aka best friends who help ease and initiate the process of downsizing my life. This doesn't mean I don't get to acquire anything it just means make room for the new. On a recent visit to San Francisco I went through several free piles and got some pretty good stuff but as soon as I got home I got rid of a comparable amount. A trick I learned from an embarrassing source (Sandra Bullock's character in "The Blind Side") is first don't buy something unless you love it in the store because that's when you like it the best and second if there's something that you would change about a garment when you wear it then get rid of it. Clothes are supposed to make you feel comfortable, they hid our shame, so if you're uncomfortable in something why wear it?

I had a hard time parting with many love items but the more I thought about them the more I remembered little things about them that I didn't like. As soon as they were gone I forgot all about them and got to be excited about new stuff. Now as our next moving date approaches I look forward to downsizing again. One thing that has changed about me since we moved up here is the fact that I've become much more of a quality rather than quantity person. Except that we live in a society that often values things the other way around.