Sylvia's Journal

Like so many baby boomers we are looking at our stuff – the ‘too much’ part of our stuff. We are getting advice from Millennials who are riding the boom, so to speak and selling us methods and books and movies as we transition to what may well be the last phase of our lives.

There is Marie Kondo who tells us how to ‘tidy up’ Japanese style (the folding of clothes into little tents is particularly remarkable). There is Peter Walsh from Australia whose approach gets to the root – his book is called ‘Letting Go.’ It’s the one that speaks most to us. Letting go of treasures (how many treasures do we need?), of stuff we might some time need (but when, didn’t we say this 10 years ago?) of mementos of a long time ago…oh there is so much of that.

And so we are throwing things out, boxes full of written papers we were once so proud of (look what I wrote!), or things I made in Kindergarten, of entrance exams I wrote for the UN, more than 3 decades ago, of my entire administrative correspondence with UNESCO headquarters in late 1979. Out, out!

There is also a staging area in what used to be my office – piles of stuff to go to the thrift store, to the Afghan family in Gloucester, to our daughters.  We are learning from Mr. Walsh not to make a pile of stuff that someone else might like. This would be the equivalent of kicking the clutter can down the street. We help each other by saying – why do you think they’d want this? Aren’t they decluttering too? The hard things are those that express something about what we had wanted to be, aspired to, but didn’t quite get – the letting go is to let go of that image of ourselves. But once you di let go it is so very liberating.

I am now fully moved into Axel’s office. This afternoon we laid the rugs on the floor, over some kind of bubble wrap between reflective paper – it kind of pops, ever so softly, when you walk over it. It is for warmth as the studio has no foundation – just cold air below the floor. The rugs are clean now, we hope, after we hung them out in subzero temperatures for a few days, vacuumed them, sprayed them with pyrethrum to get rid of the carpet beetles that had nestled into the rolled up rugs when we were not looking. The would have eaten the entire rug if I hadn’t moved into my new office and upended the piles of stuff.