A Time to Purge
We are moving in a few days to a house in Los Angeles that is considerably smaller than the one we just sold in Nashville. Some things are going into storage; mainly furniture that may be used again in the future by us or one of our children as their own lives take shape. But a lot of other things had to go.
We have been married for nearly 22 years and we have two children both of whom are young adults (or nearly so). Over the years we have collected a ton of stuff; so much of which we never use. For example, we have ten book shelves in the Nashville house, and I love books. I can spend half a day in a good book store. No, not one of the those mega stores, but the kind that is very uncommon - the neighborhood bookstore run by people who also love books. Well, I have bought hundreds of books from them over the years, and I almost never get rid of any. Not until now that is.
The process of considering every book on my shelves was really quite a journey. I was reminded how much my own worldview has evolved over the years. I also rediscovered how diverse my tastes are. I (and most of them are mine but not all) have books on art, cooking, theology, politics, dramatic and comical fiction, intense and inspiring non-fiction, first editions, and several for which I could not get past the first few pages. As I went through them, I had to consider each one. Do I agree with this author still? Did I like this book? Is it or should it be important to me? Might it be valuable one day? Will I reread it?
A stack of over 100 books made their way to purgatory, the living room floor; the way station ahead of their delivery to some other place. A few days after completing this part of our purge, a friend was over who seemed interested in several of the titles in the pile. He asked if I minded if he took some, which he was of course welcome to do. About a quarter of them went to a new home that night. The rest went to Goodwill.
When we moved to Nashville I heard rumors that some of my former colleagues had been saying we had to “down size”; you know the way people say it to insult you. Pride, getting the better of me, responded with something akin to “if down sizing is moving to a larger home on a significantly larger property in the best neighborhood in town, then yes we have down sized (fuckers).” (When we moved here I still cared too much about what other people think. I don’t anymore, but that is a topic for another day.)
But this time we are down sizing and purging ourselves of stuff we just don’t need anymore. We want to live with less, not more. We want to live nicely, but more simply. We want to live in a place where our friends and family, and their friends and family can feel welcome and not intimidated.
And anybody is welcome to judge us as they may.
