Rant/Ramble: Talking about Blogging

Just a post to point to a post about blogging on the other blog. Because I'm hoping to catch all of the bloggers that read any of my blogs, with my question.

Photo: By Guyon Moree. Wikimedia Commons.

Clip Show: Perfume and Hoarding and Catch and Release

Just a pointer to my own hoarding-related post on the perfume blog.

Photo: By Quadell. Wikimedia Commons.

Decluttering: Stuffed Animals

Stuffed animals are the very hardest thing for me to give away. When I say that I "know how" to declutter, that doesn't include stuffed animals. I have pretty nearly every one I've ever owned. And I just gave away a file-box-full of smallish ones, so I'm posting to congratulate myself.

These weren't "bedrock" clutter - they're stuffed animals that I acquired as an adult, mostly ones that I bought myself, so the sentiment is minimal. (Though I'm really hoping that the little dragon, which I vaguely link to happy college times, goes to some appreciative small child.)

It's a start. When the next box comes to light, maybe it'll be easier to give those away. Or at least possible.

Photo: By Badseed. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Post-holiday gift thoughts

Gifts.

The more I declutter, the more I'm bothered by gifts. That is, by lots of routine gifts given by lots of people to lots of other people. Loot. Piles of boxes. As I try to develop a mindset where I seriously consider whether my stuff earns its space, the giving and receiving of lots of loot seems more and more like a bad thing.

It's not that I dislike the idea of gifts. I love the idea of gifts. I just looked at a few pictures of piles of Christmas gifts, and the little-kid Ooh! reaction kicked in. But the reality, in which I search frantically for an object to give someone, settle for something that will Do, pay too much to have it shipped, try not to think about how soon it may land in a garage sale, and repeat the whole process for a dozen more people before Christmas arrives, often doesn't work well.

It means that I burn a lot of money, spend a lot of anxiety-filled time, and have no assurance that anyone will be pleased. And I suspect that a whole lot of other people have the same problem. We could be doing something else with all that - baking cookies, socializing, buying heifers or ducks across the world, or all three. Yes, I realize that there are no new thoughts here, but, well, I'm outlining my thoughts anyway.

Sure, sometimes a gift is perfect. Sometimes I find the perfect, sparkling, shiny thing for someone, something that they'll admire and enjoy and use, perhaps even thinking of me as they do so. But it's rare that I find anything like that for more than one or two people per holiday.

Why isn't it OK to just give those people the perfect shiny things, and send everybody else a card, in the hope that over the years everybody will come up occasionally in the Shiny Gift lottery?

I suppose it's because gifts really are gestures, in the end. Even when they're not good gifts, they're communication. Expensive, bulky, express-mail-conveyed communication that the gift recipient is important enough to us to be acknowledged on the holiday.

So. The problem of gifts. Every year as Christmas approaches, I wish that I'd declared that we won't be giving gifts this year, or that we'll be giving something modest, like a paperback or some family snapshots. Every year I conclude that I'm too late, because those organized people who buy their gifts in June would end up being punished for their organization, and that's not really fair.

This year, I think that February should be early enough. Anyone organized enough to buy next year's Christmas gifts in January is organized enough to think of someone else to give them to. Or if they don't, they'll be amply warned that it's not going to be an even gift exchange.

So maybe this will be the year.

Photo: By Lainey Powell. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Book Retention Policy

So, in the perfume blog, I wrote a post about curating my perfume collection. What to keep, why to keep it, how to choose between the advantages of competing bottles, and so on.

It occurs to me, why not do that with all my stuff? Specifically, today, my books? I have rules that I've been following for a while, but I don't recall ever writing them down.

The underlying basis for the rules is the question, why do I keep books?

• To read now or soon. Just for picking-up-and-reading enjoyment. I may be unusual in that I like to re-read books, sometimes many times. But only the right books. It took me a while to realize that I absolutely do not re-read them all.
• To refer to. Planting instructions for potato onions, instructions for making pintucks, recipes, that sort of thing.
• To read in the future. There is a limit to how frequently I want to re-read a book, but sometimes I want to be sure that I'll have the book when I want to read it again.

One of the main things for me to keep in mind here is that I'm not keeping my books to be a librarian. Not to have a complete collection, not to preserve them, not to have them to loan to others. I'm keeping them for me. I'm also not interested in being a collector, focusing on editions and value - I don't have the time or the space or the sustained interest for that. It wouldn't pay me back in enough enjoyment. I can have only so many hobbies, and that one didn't make the cut.

All of this means that, for example, if I'm keeping some of the books written by an author, I don't need to keep all of that author's books. I can keep just enough to enjoy reading that author's voice. This is true, for example, of Patricia Wentworth's mysteries. I read these because I enjoy the voice and the mood - I don't read them for the specific plots. So two or three of the best is enough, and I can give away the rest.

It also means that just because I want something new to read, and I went out and bought that something new, I don't need to keep that book when I'm done. I enjoyed it. I "ate" it. I'm done. Unless it's an extra good book that I'll really want to read again, I can sell it to the used bookstore. And I do - I'd say that I "eat" about a two file boxes of books every year, most of them bought from the used bookstore. They get read, put on the "sell back" shelf, and cycle their way out of the house.

(Why, you ask, don't I save that money and check books out of the library? Because I'm hard on books. I like to be able to read them while doing housework or gardening, and the library would not appreciate wet-and-dried rumpling, or dirt in the binding. I do use the library, but I also like to have a "grubby" book in progress, too.)

And if I want to read a particular book in the future, but that book is so popular that it's unlikely to go out of print, I don't need to keep the book. I can give or sell it away and count on being able to buy it again when I want it. This is true of, for example, Agatha Christie. Unlike Patricia Wentworth's books, I read Agatha Christie's books for the voice and for the specific book. So if her stuff were hard to get, I'd keep it. But Agatha Christie is in print and is likely to remain in print for the foreseeable future, so I can (and did) give them all away, and then just buy an occasional used copy of a book that I have a craving for, read it, and sell it right back to the used bookstore. (Or just give it away.)

On the other hand, Rumer Godden's children's books are very unreliably in print, and often with simply dreadful cover illustrations. And I love these books - they're an important part of my childhood mythos, and Rumer Godden's writing voice is an important influence on my own writing. So I'm actively seeking out the ones that I don't own. However, I don't need to seek them out in fine crisp flawless Firsts - an ex-library copy is just dandy.

And if I'm keeping a book for reference, I don't need another book with the same useful reference information. The example for this is the fabulous book on bulbs that I received for Christmas. All of my other bulb books can go off to the used bookstore now.

And then there's the complication of reference books that I keep for reading enjoyment and pleasure books that I keep for reference. For example, almost any of Judith Martin's books would do as a sufficient etiquette reference, but I keep them to read, and I dip into them several times a year, so the question is how much pleasure I'd get out of having more of them to read, not how much more information they contain. In fact, I'll be buying her new book on weddings, even though I couldn't care less about weddings - it will be funny and well-written and fun to read.

Of course, even with all of these factors, I'd like to keep more books than I have room for. On my children's book shelf, I'd like to keep ex-library copies of not only Rumer Godden and Ruth M. Arthur, but everything by Beverly Cleary and Louise Fitzhugh and a dozen (or maybe a dozen dozen) other authors.

So it comes down to space. All of those guidelines above offer guidance for the decisions that have to be made when The Shelves Are Full. I have eliminated double stacking on my personal shelves, and I so enjoy the pleasure of seeing all of the books and being able to grab the one I want, that I refuse to ever allow double stacking again.

The children's books, to return to that example, get half of one five-foot shelf. They could have the whole shelf, or even another shelf, but then something else would have to go. (And maybe it should - I suspect that I get more pleasure from the children's books than from some of the gardening books that live right below them.) So, so far, they get their half shelf. My very favorites get that space, and the six thousand other children's books that I'd love to own, I either close my eyes to, or buy and read and cycle right back out again. The same for every other category.

So I guess the point of all the rules is the value of a book for me. Not for anybody else, not for resale value, not for collectibility, not to be librarian to the world, not in case I ever have kids. Just for me. I still have a lot of books, and I intend to continue to have a lot of books. But looking at it this way does do a lot to clear out the excess.

Photo: Mine.

BOTD: Home Comforts, by Cheryl Mendelson

So, speaking of housekeeping, have you seen Home Comforts, by Cheryl Mendelson?

On one hand, it's alarmingly thorough. The author doesn't want you to wash your hands in the kitchen sink. And if I recall correctly, she doesn't laugh hysterically at the idea of ironing sheets.

On the other hand, it's very handy to have a sanity check for certain things. If you doubt the assurance of your floor installers that you can keep that floor clean forever without ever, even once, cleaning it with soap? She doesn't believe it either. If you've heard a rumor that people wash their walls and you don't have the faintest idea why, how, or how often one would do such a thing? She will, no doubt, cover that subject. (I can't actually offer you any details, because I'm writing this post with the book not at hand. I'm that way.)

And she backed me up on one housekeeping scheme that I previously considered to be sheer sloppiness, which gives me a happy glow of annoying self-satisfaction. The specific scheme is what I'd call "junk holding areas". I've forgotten what she calls them. The idea is that you're simply not going to put every object away in its permanent home, every time you're done with it. So you have places here and there around that are intended for stashing miscellaneous objects, until you get around to putting them away. This doesn't work if you don't put them away every few days, but it is an acknowledgement that you can have a decent house without being on your guard at every moment.

It's a good book, as long as you pick and choose the useful bits, instead of taking the whole thing seriously.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Meta: Change of Direction

So, it's been more than another week, and there's been no decluttering posts. And I've wondered, why? What's the deal? Even when I do throw stuff out, I don't post.

I figured out why: I already know how to declutter. At least, I already know how to do the "find something and throw it out" aspect of decluttering.

It's not as if I've perfected the process. It's emphatically not as if I'm done decluttering. But I already know how to declutter. All that stuff that I used to structure my first posts - lessons learned, guilt rejection, the process of figuring out what needs to go - is rarely a strain any more. I no longer need to talk, or blog about it.  Sure, there are some rough patches left - for example, there are forty or so stuffed animals to cut down to four, and that won't be fun. But those rough patches are the exception, not the rule.

I wish that I had blogged about it, back when I needed to. I'd like that record. But that was then and this is now, and I don't need to blog about the daily divestment process.

So what do I need to talk about? Housekeeping. Housekeeping beyond the getting rid of stuff. And, yeah, sometimes those rough patches. And maybe an occasional rant about those Freecycle recipients that never show up!! So that's the kind of thing that I'll be talking about from now on.

Of course, that means that the blog's name is quite thoroughly wrong. But, well, I'll worry about that later.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.