Poems

Too Many Words!

117 Comments

I have this feeling I’ve written an excessive number of blog posts about clutter.

But every so often it hits me that it would be a great topic! So I go ahead and write about clutter because I’ve temporarily forgotten the other 28 identical posts that are jammed in the back of the old blog drawer. And now I have another one. Sigh.

Because I invest so much time in every precious post, I’m loathe to delete even one in spite of the fact that I know I will never go back to read it again. And neither will anyone else.

I’m not alone in this. The New York Times “Well” blog writer Jane Brody has a new post about clutter that picks up where she left off on an older post about clutter. She doesn’t seem to be bothered by an unsightly accumulation of words on the topic. Maybe that’s because she’s had such success unloading a lot of other useless stuff.

There’s a lot to be said for getting rid of books, even though committed book people feel they lose a little bit of their soul each time they cart one out of the house – especially the favorite volumes of their youth. Brody finds strength as she goes on, learning that it gets easier the more debris you shovel out the door. I’m happy for her.

But a surprising number of reader comments go the other way, decrying the “smug” attitude of anti-clutter fanatics who use tough love to force people to toss things that may someday become family treasures, like old works of art you never look at anymore, ancient photographs and precious hardcover volumes of literature.

I can’t claim to have read many of those classics, though I tried to wade through “Moby Dick” once and found it a tough slog indeed. Too many words. Melville should have read “The Hoarder In You” by Dr. Robin Zasio – a book Brody praises.

“I would say that Dr. Zasio’s book is about the best self-help work I’ve read in my 46 years as a health and science writer. She seems to know all the excuses and impediments to coping effectively with a cluttering problem, and she offers practical, clinically proven antidotes to them.”

That’s 50 words. Nice, but I think it could be done in 35.

Since we can’t clean each other’s closets and it would be wrong to compost someone else’s books, let’s de-clutter texts today. Think how free that old word hoarder Melville would have felt if he’d reduced his opus to a more manageable haiku:

Chasing the White Whale
Captain Ahab lost his leg
And his mind went too.

Or Tolstoy:

“It’s like ‘War and Peace'”
says the thing is “too damn long”.
Whatever it is.

What do you have too much of?

117 thoughts on “Too Many Words!”

  3. Good morning. I am trying to get rid of a bunch of stuff in preparation for moving. Much of what I am getting rid of I probably should have been discarded long ago. I have numberous file drawers filled with all kinds paper work that has no use and some of it had no use years ago when I filed it.

    I could go on and on about all my clutter, but I will refrain from doing that to cut down on cluttering up this blog. However, I don’t want to discourage anyone from letting their words fly freely. I am just limiting my discussion of clutter as a response to the topic today. When it comes to other topics, you will have to put up with my excessive use of words as you have in the past

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  4. Rise and de-Clutter Baboons!

    This morning I have one too many high energy dogs–the puppy(Lucky) is CRAZY this morning. As I write this she is stalking the other dog (Bootsy) who is getting revenge by having a sit-in in Lucky’s crate.

    Other items: too many apps on my iPad–very cluttered these days
    At work–too many clients
    Living Room–too many dog toys

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    1. Too many clients? I would think that might be a good thing in some ways. I imagine it is better than too few clients.

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      1. Pretty predictable aren’t I. Maybe I will try some imprudent invective some morning to see if I get censored.

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  5. Too many cookbooks I never use. Kitchen gadgets, pots and pans, dishes, and glasses in every size and shape except the ones I occasionally need. I have three, count ’em, three leaky teapots! Anyone know of a way to fix a leaky ceramic teapot?

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    1. I have one big bookshelf for my cookbooks, but for a few years now, it’s been full. So if I just HAVE to have another cookbook, I have to get rid of one. Kinda like a revolving door!

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      1. There you go, Anna. That’s the kind of thinking that has made me hold on to them in the first place. Now going out and buying whatever little plant would fit it there, that’s a different story.

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    3. Don’t fix it — plant an annual in it and put in your yard. Leaky is better because it won’t get waterlogged 🙂

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  6. We have too much food in the freezers downstairs. We have too many books of all sorts, too much sausage making stuff and grilling stuff and smoking chips, sheet music, children’s school memorabilia, gardening equipment. I don’t have too many soup spoons, though. My parents are always cleaning and reducing their stuff, telling me that they don’t want me to have to deal with it when they die.

    We also have too many dusty millers-those moths. The mild winter must be the cause. They are all over town. There are literally hundreds of them outside. I killed 6 this morning that somehow got into the house. They swarm all over and hide in any spot they can at night as it is cold. A whole bunch of them swarmed out of the tail pipe of my daughter’s car when she started it yesterday. Ick!

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    1. Ick indeed!

      More power to your parents! I will be forever grateful that my folks downsized to an apartment while they were still healthy…

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        1. He is still doing girls’ volley ball in the fall, but he really is adjusting to being home in the Summer most of the time. He goes to the local grocery store and has coffee with his buddies every afternoon and he volunteers at the local hospital, valeting cars one morning a week, and also goes to the Veteran’s nursing home wneever he can to see frieneds and call bingo. He is pretty happy and he and my mom follow the Twins on TV. He naps more now and goes to bed earlier than he used to.

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        2. Okay, I don’t get this, Renee. You said in the same sentence “He is pretty happy and he and my mom follow the Twins on TV.”

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        3. Ha ha! My parents are happy watching no matter the outcome. I know what you mean, though.

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  7. Books lp’s hats sport coats cars bass guitars pianos winter top coats old tvs piles of paperwork hot dogs and it is garage sale season so I will be loading up on other too good to pass up bargains to add to my surpluses I have been told my running an ebay store was like an alcoholic being hired as a bartender.

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      2. It’s been years
        They are good last sale I netted 5000 and made a bunch of people smile along the way but it didn’t make a dent I have added 11000 sq ft since then

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  8. Too many books (I recently quit my online bookselling business and have lots of books that I didn’t sell – and I have quite a few books in my own collection.). Too many cookbooks. Too many dandelions.Too much dirt and dust and grime in the house.

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      1. Oh yeah, I have that, too. I swear if I didn’t have a cat and dog (neither are short haired), I would never have to vacuum, just sweep up the crumbs off the floor (the dog eats all the crumbs now).

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    2. Sounds like our house, Edith and PJ. We have book clutter, plus sewing/yarn clutter, dish/cooking clutter and tons of “fur”niture. However, moving twice in the last 10 yrs was helpful and I share a booth with some friends in an antique mall (more of a “used a bit” mall) where we dispose of our excess clutter. We have a sweet deal where we sell on consignment and don’t have to spend time staffing at the shop. Just drop the stuff off and collect the money. No e-bay, no mailing. And now a little bank account for a trip 🙂

      Bill and I have to honor each other’s definition of “clutter” as long-married people are wont to do. It’s only fair to have some respected boundaries.

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        1. My friends are long time friends of the owner 🙂 They amuse him and he’s a soft touch.

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  9. Too much ancestral crap! I want to sort through it and sell about half of it off, but the idea of first finding an appraiser to value it (it probably won’t be worth much–mostly late Victorian middle-class-standard tchochkes–but you never know) and then and finding an antique dealer to take it off my hands for a reasonable price is overwhelming and I don’t even start. Referrals would be much appreciated, if the blog allows.

    I also have too much unshredded paper. The shredder makes this horrible, loud, high-pitched whine, so I never use it (plus it overheats at the drop of a hat), and I end up with bags of old receipts and bills in the closet, waiting for me to deal with them and becoming spider nurseries in the mean time. I really should just shred them by hand/scissors; that’d be a nice way to justify sitting in front of the TV tonight!

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    1. Shred-It has periodic “shred fests” at parking lots in various communites where you can bring up to two grocery bags of paper to the Shred-It truck and they take care of it free, right there. As it happens, there are several shred fests scheduled this Saturday in the Twin Cities. I have worn out one too many shredders and if there isn’t a shred fest going on, I’m not above paying a minimal fee to take my shredables to Office Max to be put down. I know it costs less than a new shredder. Can you guess my biggest clutter problem? http://shredit.com/minnesota/community-events.aspx

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    2. A few years ago I hired a guy from St P todo just this same job. He was quite helpful. Email me with your contact info and I’ll get it to you.

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  10. Books, bad temper, pain, drawing paper and pencil, bike inner tubes needed to be patched, Christmas stuff (not my fault), pounds, unfulfilled plans, worries (my fault), quotes, out-dated stuff in the back of the refrigerator, and mass nouns.

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      1. I was looking up “mass” to create a response even cuter than Steve’s when I found that there is a thing called a mass noun:
        Definition of MASS NOUN
        : a noun (as sand or water) that characteristically denotes in many languages a homogeneous substance or a concept without subdivisions and that in English is preceded in indefinite singular constructions by some rather than a or an

        Always larnin’ here on the Trail.

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        1. I have MUCH clutter.
          I have MANY books.
          I have MUCH stress.
          I have MANY worries.
          Some are both. We have much water in our basement. I would like to order two waters and a coke.
          Sorry my mind wandered off into my past there for a moment:
          I used to teach a cross-language course, English and French. I taught the students about English and how French grammar was different. It was fun and successful. We did it for years. Got a nod from the state of MN over it. Anyway one of the tricky issues in learning a different language is that languages do not agree on what are mass and count nouns. Especially tricky in French.

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  11. This is amusing, but I’m gonna have to bug out for a couple hours or so. Arch criminal Edith is visiting my little bungalow today to exchange books, and I need to hide everything in the house that might be worth stealing. Come to think of it, that won’t take long at all!

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  13. Wine glasses, miscellaneous nuts, bolts, screws, nails, one-use tools, and old financial documents:tax returns, bills, medical records and statements, anything “official”. The bummer is I’ve had “shred old documents” on my to do list for about 3 years. 😦

    Chris

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  14. I have too many books, too many unused pots and pans and cooking devices, too many jars of herbs, spices and teas, too many guitars and mandolins, too many dog bones, and too many size 8 jeans from 1993 that I keep because someday they will fit me again. (I have numerous thin T-shirts of this ilk, as well.)

    OT: My hostas, jack-in-the-pulpits and Solomon’s seals got shredded in last night’s storms. 😦 They were looking so nice this year!

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        1. A friend of mine gave me some clumps of day lilies several years ago. She commented, “They’re weeds, aren’t they?” I didn’t understand, but now I do. I mow them, pull them, dig them, move them, donate them to people who come to gardening get-togethers 🙂 and I still have more.

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      2. I have the same problem, Krista, a clump of day lilies that’s getting too large. In fact I need to cut back or remove a number of kinds of perennials that are pretty much getting out of control. Too bad about the storm damage to your plants. It missed us.

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      1. That’s interesting. There’s almost no wind at all here. Everything is soaked. The trees first got hit by hard frost, now their leaves are shredded. Many of the flowers that were blooming have been shredded. All the tulip blossoms have fallen off.

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  15. All of the above, except the bike inner tubes, musical instruments, and possibly stamp pads. Also too many cans of paint and wood stain, partially used.

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  17. I have a whole shelf of books on how to get organized. They all say you can’t organize clutter! Too much of almost everything but money.

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    1. I know! Everyone keeps thinking/hoping they can just reorganize their space. But it usually boils down to just TOO MUCH stuff.

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  18. A large stack of old LPs, and a turntable to play them, but, I just discovered, our newfangled stereo receiver/amplifier doesn’t have a spot to plug the turntable into.

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  19. Books I will read “someday soon,” little booklets and papers with warranty and owner information for stuff I probably don’t even own anymore, unmatched socks, cleaning products that don’t work, partial jars of jams in the fridge, emails from 3+ years ago (on my computer)…

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  20. Morning!

    Just the other day I took my old 8-track player and a couple tapes into the college to show a student who didn’t know what they were. Never really thought about this being ‘clutter’, it was just on the shelf in my office. All the boxes and bags of receipts from the last 10 years piled in front of the 8-track player; now that’s clutter! Right?

    My dad, as they’ve moved, brings me his piles of ‘stuff’ and makes a pile in the shed. He’s never going to use it again either and I don’t want it… old boards (he did a lot of woodworking so saved all the scraps. And all those scraps came to me.) Misc jars of screws, bolts, nuts, misc tool batteries the tool they fit having wore out years ago, and old fire extinguisher. I think I have 3 seperate piles of his stuff. And it’s all piled in front of MY stuff! Machinery I don’t use anymore and really should sell, the old JD 237 mounted corn picker ‘that might be an antique. Maybe the historical society would want that…?’ and the cable that I’m going to use to pull that old shed roof together before it falls down.
    All Dad’s stuff is in my way!

    It’s not my fault, it’s his stuff….

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    1. It’s so hard to throw out scraps of wood. They have to be good for SOMETHING someday. Screws, bolts, nuts, nails – same thing. Wasband used to keep them all but if he started a new project, he’d go out and buy new anyway without checking the stash.

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    3. I just tried to explain 8-track to the teenager last weekend. The concept that you couldn’t choose where to listen to on the tape (wherever you were when you turned it off last was where you would be when you turned it back on) was clearly confounding to her!

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      1. When I went from books on tape to books on CD, I was annoyed that you could no longer do just that (with my CD player at least). Now that I finally have an iPod (won in a company contest), I’ll see how that works.

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        1. It’s nice. There’s a book marker in the upper right corner. If you touch it, it turns red. I’ve noticed, however, that it keeps your page anyway. When you return to your book, it opens right to the page you were last reading.

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  21. Unadorned windows. I really dislike most window treatments. Since my windows were replaced little by little over time, the mini-blinds were removed and never replaced. I have pieces of fabric and old tablecloths covering the critical ones but the public ones are very public. In the summer, the house is mostly encased in ivy so that provides some shade and privacy.
    Major procrastination on figuring out what coverings I could stand.

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    1. Lisa, that’s exactly where I am with my new-ish windows. Too much visibility at night from the street. We might use our dining room more if the windows had some night time covering. Procrastination for sure. Also indecision.

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    2. : ) I have one window with a cafe-type old tablecloth curtain. The 1st decorating decision I made in this house was to remove the curtains in the dining room and kitchen. I replaced them with shelves for plants—south windows, not on the street side.

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  22. Clothes. Just went rummaging in the closet for a 50s “costume” this morning and realized it’s time to put away winter and bring out summer. This makes me aware of how many clothes I have saved (many of which are the wrong size) in case I need to regularly look “nice” again. Too many cards and stationary, half finished blog posts, photo albums…

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    1. People who struggle as I do with weight often have too many old clothes. I have kept huge bags of old clothes that I had grown too big to wear. Those bags of small-sized clothes can become a cruel joke if you store them for years without a chance of fitting in them again. Imagine the joy I had recently when I dragged those clothes bags up out of the basement, having lost a lot of weight, and now I’m wearing all that stuff that sat in the basement (weighing on my soul) all those years.

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        1. My erstwife was a pack rat who hoarded stuff. I’m a “heaver” (a person who loves to heave stuff out). After decades of this, I became quietly surly. I hit on the plan of heaving something she’d hoarded each time she took a business trip. It didn’t do much for the basement, which was still stuffed to the gills, but it made me smile. Then when she took a trip to the Balkans I threw out some floor tiles we’d kept around since moving into this home in 1976. We hadn’t touched them in 27 years. Wouldn’t you know, when she returned she spotted a damaged tile. “That’s okay,” she said. “We have some of these in the basement, I think.” I found an excuse to leave the house.

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    2. I’m another one with too many old clothes saved. I save some of them to use when painting or grubbing around in the garden. Mostly they just fill up my storeage areas until I have way more than I can use and then I get rid of them.

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      1. That man is a national treasure. I had hoped that he would have received the Nobel Peace Prize by now. It’s not too late, but they had better hurry, even old folk singers don’t live forever.

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  24. Coincidence topic for me today. Building management has announced that we cannot store anything in the garage besides our car. I have three boxes of wood and drift wood I was going to use for carving and a carving machine out there. I guess I just throw it. They do not allow us to keep bikes in our apartments, a rule that makes sense to me. But now they have basically outlawed bikes. Not in the apartment, not in the garage, not outside. Sigh!!

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    5. Just got the paper under my door. Face to face is better always with her; nice woman; if I get a chance to talk to her tomorrow. But as always someone pushed it. The guy behind me in the garage has just put a big couch unit out there. Then he parks his over-sized pickup in front of that so half is pickup is in the middle aisle. If I did not have a small car, I could not get in and out. I did not complain, but the manager parks next to him. I suspect she told him not to do it so he said what about . . .As a long-time teacher I know how it goes with rules. You try to be reasonable and then some spoiled child pushes. And he is a spoiled child, the guy with the big pickup.

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      1. I would offer the wood and driftwood on here, interesting stuff. But I have to get it out by Tuesday and we have to be gone next week.

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      2. That’s really a shame, Clyde. I’ll come and get the wood and driftwood and keep it for you if you’d like me to. Where will you put your bike?

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        1. Thanks, but I have a short-term plan: bring the bike with me and throw most of the wood. Then when we get through next week, I’ll talk to her.

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        2. Let Krista keep the driftwood till we talk to tim – he’ll probably want it! 🙂

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  25. I have an annoying habit of using vintage things, tablecloths, cloth napkins, pillowcases, hotpads, until they are almost used up but too good to throw away. Someday, I may make a quilt with the beautifully embroidered/tatted/crocheted ends of pillowcases/sheets or sheets into pillowcases. Some days I long to live out of one cupboard like Heidi’s grandfather.

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    2. I have some of those too, plus a lot of pretty old hankies, and thought of either a quilt, or patchwork curtains… We should get together, Nan.

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      1. Oh, yes the pretty hankies! Yes to a quilt/project get-together, sounds like a good fall/early winter activity.

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        1. Bingo. Now we should figure out how to remember that we’re going to do that. 🙂

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      2. left to my own devices, I let it slide. But, when I have made a commitment to someone else, I am uber responsible. I can be the rememberer.

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    3. I like that image of Heidi’s grandfather’s cupboard. Sometimes I play a little mind game with myself — If I lived in one room, what would I bring with me? Last weekend we went to the Lower Town Art Crawl and saw some truly incredible artist’s lofts. Small living/working spaces, each one reflecting a unique point of view. Perfectly configured to that individual.

      The trouble with “Clutter” is that it confuses your priorities. And it’s just plain time consuming to maintain, clean, whatever. I think downsizing your living space could create space for choosing how to spend your time. Of course, most of us have been talking about physical clutter. Just like mental clutter/busy-ness, it distracts and confuses us.

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      1. well said, Robin. I enjoy my space—small house, but time consuming if there is too much stuff. I would enjoy half empty closets/cupboards/drawers, a recent goal.

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  26. I have too many instruments and too many LPs and CDs and tapes and songbooks and sheet music and too many tunes in my head. When I come home from teaching elementary music every day I need to turn off the music and just listen to the silence for a while. My husband has more instruments than I and cars, lumber, etc. etc….
    This song came to me for today as a memory of Dolly singing it on her TV show and, doggone it if it didn’t show up on YouTube exactly the way I remember it! Enjoy. You can’t take it with you.

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