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A Place to Put My Stuff

  • Posted on August 30, 2010 at 7:36 pm

There is a point to be made about the “stuff” George Carlin rants about.  I know I have a lot of stuff.  Some of it I don’t pay much attention to but it still sits there, with me unable to throw it out or give it away.  After all, I might need that stuff some day.

When I was in high school my French teacher would get so mad at us when we said we had to get our “stuff”.  She always said, “You stuff a turkey!”  She insisted that stuff was action, doing something and that it definitely wasn’t a noun as in the things we always talk about when we mention “our stuff.”  The class always laughed and I guess most of us never really learned that lesson because I’m sure we all can relate to the “stuff” that George talks about.

Recently, I came across a postcard that I had sent to my brother, Bob, when I was very young and on a trip out west.  I found this postcard after my father passed away.  I’m sure Mom kept it with her “stuff”.  Now it’s once again “my stuff”.  After all it is a part of my history and it even has a Kennedy stamp on it!  How cool is that?

I wonder why so many of us keep and collect so much stuff.  I am as guilty as the next person and maybe more so.  My biggest collection is probably artwork.  I don’t have enough walls to put all the art up that I have bought, traded for and made.  Yet, I keep finding things and making things that adds to my stuff.  George says the answer for most of us is buying a bigger house.  I live alone so I doubt I’ll go for a house much bigger than the one I already own.  Some people suggest rotating the artwork by the seasons.  However, art isn’t the only stuff I have.  Like most people I have a lot of stuff hanging around from clothing, dishes and even furniture pieces.  I cannot think of parting with my stuff, so I am kept in a constant mode of keeping the stuff somewhere by dusting around it and moving it from one place to the other.  I box it up only to discover it years later and wonder once again about it.

I’ve watched the show “Clean House” and I have discovered that a lot of people have a bigger problem with their stuff than I have, so it always make me feel like my stuff is okay!  Since I live alone no one else has to deal with my stuff on a regular basis.  However, like George, if you are looking for space for your stuff on the dresser in my guest room, you will discover my stuff is already there.  I have plenty of little tchotchkes that most people would say, “What are you hanging on to that for?”

As school starts I try to organize my stuff.  It means going through lots of stuff and keeping most of it but giving some to the Goodwill store and putting some in the garbage.  I have found that I have more stuff at school.  As an art teacher it is easy to collect a lot of things because all that stuff might be useful in an art project.  So as I weed through my stuff and organize my life for the new school year I wish you well with all your stuff.

I’d like to just add that this poor woman couldn’t even be found in all of her stuff when she died.  So find some way to live with your stuff without getting lost in it.

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