Rambling: Priorities, Post 1: Books and Perfume versus Beads and Teacups

In one way, the beginning of the decluttering process was easy.

Because at the beginning, I had a lot of flat-out junk. I had books that I could be pretty confident I'd never read, clothes that I'd never wear, movies that I'd never watch, papers that I'd never need to refer to again, manuals for household items that I no longer owned, and so on.

In memory, those decisions, such as the decision on whether to keep the breadmaker cookbook after we no longer had a breadmaker, look obvious and easy. Priorities were involved, but they were about the should-be-obvious decision of, do I give a higher priority to the stuff that I use, or the stuff that I don't? Now, it wasn't really obvious - if it had been, the clutter wouldn't have been there. But it looks obvious from a distance, now that some of the decisionmaking habits are formed.

Toward the middle of the decluttering, the decisions are changing, because I'm getting to stuff that I would use, if I had the room. The house is tidy enough to allow entertaining, so if I had a china pantry, I'd own a bunch of sets of goofy vintage dishes, and I'd use them to set a lovely eclectic table.  Similarly, if I had a walk-in closet, I'd own and wear a whole lot of clothes.

Except, actually, no, I wouldn't - if I had either a china pantry or a walk-in closet, I'd use it to set up shelves for my perfume collection, and I'd own a whole lot more perfume. And I'd stuff books into the space where the perfume is now.

And with that, the question of priorities comes up in this post a little bit before it was invited. I see a personal priority: I would prioritize an extensive perfume collection, and more books, above an extensive clothing or tableware collection.

And that's what the middle stage of decluttering is all about - setting priorities. I hate that phrase; it sounds so Judgmental Kindergarten Teacher, doesn't it? But it's true all the same.

Because pretty nearly everyone has more interests and hobbies and stuff that they want and could obtain - maybe used, maybe free, but still obtainable - than they have space. So after a lot of effort is put into mastering the skill of "I won't use it, so I'll get rid of it", suddenly there's this brick wall, this new set of decisions. I would use it, I do want it, but do I want it more than all of the other things competing for this space?

Suddenly I'm looking at making decisions about myself, about my potential, about what I'm most likely to do with the life beyond clutter. Am I a person who sets a beautiful eclectic table, or am I a perfume collector? That one isn't too hard for me - however much I love looking at tableware, the perfume collector persona wins out.

So let's move to something harder: Am I a book collector, or am I a perfume collector?

Oh, my.

Now, this doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing decision. So far, the answer is that I'm eighty percent book collector and twenty percent perfume collector. But the difficulty is in accepting that I have only so much space for books-or-perfume and, metaphorically, keeping those numbers down so that they total no more than one hundred percent.

(What about my entertaining self? That's an identity that I share with Himself, so it occupies a different space, both mentally and in terms of house room. My gardening self? That's out in the shed and the garage. Yes, this metaphor is getting complicated. Let's forge on anyway.)

The two things, books and perfume, go in a common set of spaces - the shelves in my itty bitty much-beloved den, and the top of my bureau. And to keep those spaces nice and pretty and therefore keep me happy in my den and when using my bureau, I can't allow myself to become, say, ninety percent book collector and forty percent perfume collector - I can't occupy more than one hundred percent of that space.

And that's hard. And what's even harder is that it means that I am, right now, zero percent seamstress. There is no room, no room whatsoever, in my den for sewing. Or beads. Or any of the other hobbies that I'd like to make room for.

Of course, those decisions about myself aren't permanent. I have the power to decide, at any time, that I'm forty percent book collector, thirty percent perfume collector, and thirty percent seamstress. Any time. Any time, that is, that I'm ready to give or sell away a couple of hundred books.

And, really, this limited space is not bad. Our house has enough space for a reasonable, rational number of hobbies. For a person with cluttery genes, a limited amount of space is a very good thing. Our house is the perfect size. Because the priorities aren't only about space - that's just what enforces them. Time is even more limited than space.

I have dozens of perfume samples that I've never thoroughly tried - it used to be more than a hundred, but I gave a bunch away. I have dozens of books that I've never read. Last time I did make space to sew, I had a dozen projects waiting for completion. I haven't made my vegetable choices for this year's vegetable garden, and it's May.

If I had enough space for all of the hobbies that I wanted to try, I'd never see satisfying accomplishments in any of them, because my time would be sliced into unusable fractions. So when I say that I'd "use" the stuff I don't have room for, it's a pretty narrow definition of the word.

But all the same, it's now, in the middle of the decluttering, that I have to tell myself, "I choose, for the foreseeable future, not to be a collector of vases, a stringer of beads, a maestro of table settings, or a maker of costumes or patchwork quilts."

And that's really, really hard.

Image: By Holly. Wikimedia Commons.