Choose Your Hard

Helplessness at the Hands of an Angry God

There are a few places where we feel absolutely helpless in life no matter how much we plan for it. Weather does whatever it wants to. No matter how much snow the meteorologist predicts, the sky will do what the sky wills to do. And Public Works will do the best they can with the staff they have. That’s a whole other issue. I’m talking about what’s out of our control, and weather is out of our control. Snow, a tornado, a hurricane, a flood, out of our control. Genetics and health, out of our control. The wait at the doctor’s office, out of our control. No matter how much we plan on our week looking a certain way, things always mess up our schedule.

Take my Botox appointment for instance. I started with one doctor, then moved onto her student. Then moved back to her doctor for a few appointments while they switched me to a new student who I was supposed to meet this time. A couple weeks ago, they changed my appointment to a neurologist. I don’t know the difference between a neurologist and a Botox administrator is, but it seems pretty important when you have a needle in your eye muscles stabbed about twenty different times. They changed it a couple days. Fortunately I’m unemployed, so I didn’t have to scramble to fix it with my employer. Fast forward to today. There’s a snow storm we’ve been having off and on for a few days now. The doctor who was supposed to do my Botox couldn’t make it into work. 6:30am I get a phone call asking me if it’s okay if I switch TODAY’S appointment from one time to an earlier time (by a little over an hour) and with a different doctor…again, a neurologist. Sure, I sleepily said. “Oh, thank you so much!” said the relieved nurse who I can tell is working her butt off making a bunch of last minute adjustments and meeting with a bunch of cranky people. My husband was cranky on my behalf. I was too sleepy to care, and like I said, she was probably being yelled at and cussed at by other patients. One phone call of grace could probably make her give one sigh of relief in a hectic day.

What my husband didn’t know (and since he may or may not read all my blogs mwahahahahaha) is that I stayed up until 2am watching YouTube videos about minimalism and decluttering and what to buy at Aldi and Dollar Tree and those types of stores. I now follow several different channels, including a minimalist who had to change her lifestyle after losing practically her whole family over the years and having to go through all their stuff. I don’t want that for anybody!

We came across the 90/10 rule today. It says that about 10% of clutter is actually physical while the other 90% is emotional and mental. What they mean by that is if you don’t understand the underlying conditions of what made you clutter your house in the first place, you will just replace stuff with more stuff over the years, which I agree with. What I don’t agree with is one of the rules that went along with it which is one in, one out, which sounds like it is. For every item that goes into the house, you bring one item out of the house. But I’m still working on mentally and emotionally not being a clutterer. I think our society gets a horrible stigma attached to the word “hoarder” now, and it’s usually not that bad. It’s just an accumulation of stuff you get over the years that you might need or gifts from friends, things that define your identity, temporary items that turn permanent, things like that. And you never realize how much stuff you have until you literally bring it all out and see through every nook and cranny and under the bed and in the closets and even in corners how much mismatched stuff we have! We don’t need all of it!

What really hit me hard is a video I saw that said basically that the truth is we ascribe more value to our stuff than others do. And not everyone wants our stuff. GASP!!! What?! Not everyone wants my clothes and my matching cups and my stuffed animals in great condition and books that still have the discount price tags on them??? That hurt, but it’s the truth. Not everyone wants your stuff, especially since our generations have less and less money to buy on the next thing.

We are honestly terrified of when the generations above us pass away. Not only will it come with grief, but as the documentary The Minimalists reminded me, it comes with a house full of stuff and memories to go through. When my grandmother started to get older, we helped her move from a house into an apartment. From one hoarder’s paradise to a half-hoarder’s paradise, and she tried fitting as much of her stuff into that tiny apartment as could fit, but she didn’t do any of the lifting. We donated and threw away a lot of stuff. When she moved from her apartment into a nursing home, she threw the most giant fit of all. She had about one closet, one dresser, and as much furniture as she could fit her bed, dresser, and chair into half a room. She hated everyone by then. I think her things gave her comfort and helped solidify her identity. Who was she without her candy bowl, her magazines, her knick-knacks, etc.?

We were a family of six. We had a three level house where everything was on the first floor PLUS an unfinished basement where the laundry and extra storage was and an upstairs where we had fun times when it wasn’t too hot. Then my mother passed away, my dad remarried, and most of my stepmother’s stuff went into the attic and basement and traded some stuff on the middle floor. We had two full households of stuff in our house, and as far as I know, it’s still like that. There was just too much sentimental value in stuff.

Remember the grieving process I told you about in one of my earlier posts when I lost everything moving states by plane? Not everyone goes through that process. Some people go their whole lives moving their stuff from house to house, never fully decluttering, never sensing true loss of physical stuff to realize the insignificance of the value of the physical. I’m not saying there’s no value in having stuff, because I know lots of people would disagree, especially those with almost nothing, and I wholeheartedly agree. Up to a certain point, stuff brings happiness. After a certain point though, more stuff brings more stress and anxiety. Not knowing where your next meal is going to come from brings stress and anxiety. Having so much food in too many unorganized places that you can’t find where you put that box of pasta or having it SO clean that you have to have a certain amount of pasta in each container for it to look uniform and pretty brings anxiety too. Ironically I heard a quote in one of the minimalist videos that I heard in a marriage/divorce Facebook scroll thing. It was something along the lines of “Life is hard either way. Choose your hard.”

Which hard are you going to choose today?