Packing up for a year’s adventure has elicited the following
exclamations from me: “Why do we have so much %*&#^@ stuff?” “Where did all this #$&% come from?”
And, most frequently, “#$*%! How
did we get so many $%*# piles of %$*?
There aren’t that many of us in our household: me, my husband, my son,
and our (albeit large) goldendoodle.
So how did we get so much stuff?
More than one sweaty afternoon of collapsing cardboard boxes,
piling seemingly useless electronics, and sorting clothes in a mammoth box
labeled: “sentimental t-shirts” has sent me to the internet for the refreshing
sight of tiny houses. I linger
over sleek modern Norwegian summer homes and Norwegian Koie, turf-roofed cabins
that look to me like they house fairies and elves. They are really tiny.
My husband finds me eating an ice cream bar and scrolling through
photographs of 400-square- foot rustic-modern cabins with secret compartments,
spring-loaded Murphy beds, and swiveling walls. “If we had a house like this, we would never have too
much stuff.” I tell him. He is
unimpressed. I explain to visitors
looking at the explosion of books, cds, and rough drafts littering his study
floor: “He needs space to be messy.” At almost 1600 square feet, our house is not tiny, but
neither is it the McMansion that I think occupy the nightmares of some tiny
house dwellers. There is just
enough room to be messy in our house, just enough room to accumulate piles of
stuff.
By the time I near the end of the basement-cleaning job, I
am ecstatically embracing the hard-won space. I tell neighbors they should come see it. (It is unfinished, and, like all St.
Louis basements, dank.) One of the
last objects to go is an old wardrobe box. It has a door cut into one side, a window into another. It has been adorned with stickers and drawings. Inside, I find a cardboard tube covered
in felt and ribbons: a periscope,
a magic wand, maybe a chimney.
It’s been hard to say good-bye to this box even though it’s been years
since my son played in it regularly. It reminds me of my childhood afternoons spent under desks
and tables and in boxes of my own.
My stuffed animals gathered around me, a tea set, and, for reasons only
my five-year-old self could explain, a bottle of my mother’s hair spray could
make any space my own little home.
It’s hard to throw away my son’s tiny house. I picture my husband walking a visitor through our basement
in a few years. He will explain:
“She needs space to be sentimental.”
