All you need is less
I was standing in the attic of my house looking through a small plastic box of photographs. The photographs were partially chewed up, some were stuck together. As I was leafing through the pictures trying to gently separate them without ripping them the telltale signs of black, rice size mouse feces were everywhere. I realized the liquid that had caused these photographs to stick together was also excrement from, no doubt, several individuals of the lovely, small rodent variety. I had countless boxes in the attic and most of them had been used by mice for the various activities of their daily lives in one way or another. This one however was clearly more toilet-like than any of the other boxes. Why?, I wondered. It did not take long to discover the packaging remains of a delicious bar of Lindt’s finest dark chocolate hidden underneath the pictures. This particular box had been the site of a right feast for the little creatures a long time ago and there was plenty of evidence to prove it. Mystery solved!
Going through boxes like this one (many others thankfully less gross) had become my hobby. In 2009 I moved to Vermont and into the Funhouse. A house which over the 13+ years my husband John had owned it, had been the accommodation for many friends and family, as well as ski and snowboard instructors from around the world. The boxes in the attic were filled with John’s things - clothes, books, old electronics, pictures, travel memorabilia - but also the belongings that many other human inhabitants of the house had left behind. Besides the boxes, there were bed frames, old lamps, school desks, dressers, mattresses, an old barn door, insulation material, the list goes on. John had intended to finish this beautiful large attic space and make it his own living quarters and although there was plenty of evidence of progress on the project, it was ultimately never finished.
Besides the attic, the house had three large garages as well as a huge basement. And the ‘Little House’ across the street, which John also owned, had two more garages and a small basement. All of these spaces were full, full to the point that it was hard to walk through sometimes. A pool table, soda machines, dartboards, rows of ski trail maps taped to a waste pipe, tools, old doors and windows, two old cast iron stoves, skis, ski boots, snowboards, snowboard boots, an old Scorpion Snowmobile, building materials, furniture, a few old refrigerators, an old F150 Ford truck without a windshield, the list is truly endless. I was in my element! Organizing, cleaning, and clearing all this up was going to keep me nicely entertained for a while.
The act of clearing out is a methodical process. You pick something up and you identify the item, which is usually, though not always, easy. Then you assess its functionality and possible uses. Then comes the hard part, the emotional part, the question - what do I do with it? Is it trash? If so, can it be recycled? Or might it still be useful to someone? If so, is it useful to me, or do I donate or even sell it? If I donate or sell, what might be the most appropriate avenue for this particular item? I enjoyed the puzzle of answering all these questions and slowly seeing the spaces in the house opening up. I enjoyed knowing that things that had been stored for years would finally find their way to someone who might use them again.
I was about 7-8 months pregnant with Klara in the summer of 2011 when I woke up early one morning and felt inspired. My goal was to get the Ford pick-up truck out of the garage and sell it. Before John even got up I had emptied out the bed of the truck, which had acted as storage for John’s kitesurfing gear, I had taken pictures of it and posted it for sale online. Within less than a couple of hours, someone contacted us to say they would come and get it. Later that day, John moved it out of the garage and by the end of the day we saw it loaded onto a trailer and waved it ‘goodbye’. It was one less thing weighing on John’s mind, one less thing he had to get fixed. Just that easily we had emptied an entire bay of the garage and John spent an afternoon that weekend setting up a wall-mounted storage system for the many kites and kiteboards that had been stored in the back of the truck. Progress!
After John passed away and Klara and I had moved out of the house to live with his parents, coming back and going through the many things left behind was therapeutic. I organized all his pictures, at least those that could be saved from the mouse toilet, into one box. I created a box of his things that I wanted to keep as memories for Klara. I encountered many items that were of no use to me, but I knew would mean a lot to someone else who had known John. So I passed on his snowboards, cooking knives, BBQ smokers, beer brewing equipment, and so many other things on the endless list, to family and friends. It was a process of letting go, of sharing memories. Since the house was also a rental house, I spent a lot of time there making beds, clearing, and organizing. Sometimes I would stop, sit, and just cry for a little while, before collecting myself to keep working.
Now, what does all this have to do with ‘two suitcases’, the main title of this story?! That is a very good question…
Before settling in Vermont I had spent 16 years of my life moving and traveling. I was always packing my bag to go somewhere. I became good at packing bags. When the time came to move I would donate and let go of things I didn’t need, I’d pack a couple of suitcases and move on.
That changed when I came to Vermont. Now I suddenly found myself owning two houses, full of stuff, stuff that was not so easy to let go of in a short time. Most of it was in the house before I had arrived, but my own system of minimizing had, of course, not been flawless. Over the years I did accumulate a small number of boxes of my own that were stored at my parent’s house in Germany. These were all filled with the kinds of things you really can’t replace or pass on to others. They were full of memories - photo albums, old letters, and notes from college. When my parents embarked on a house moving project of their own, my small collection of boxes was shipped to Vermont and added to a small corner in the attic.
The ‘The Suitcases’ project, on one hand, is my effort to get back to a place where I could pack two suitcases and move tomorrow if I had to. On the other hand, it is also a metaphor for simplicity, for taking some of the noise and clutter out of life and creating space.
The progress so far, having been here for 11 years? The attic is empty, the garages emptied and/or organized, the basements are empty. One of the houses, ‘The Funhouse’, has been sold and the other house, the ‘Little House’, has had a complete makeover that is in the final stages. What remains now is for me to go through my personal memories, photo albums, diaries, and letters which are much harder to ‘organize’ than a tool shed. This blog is part of the effort to rediscover, process, and share the many less tangible ‘things’, events, experiences, and memories that have accumulated over the last 40 years.
In terms of the actual suitcases? Maybe as 2021 wraps up, I will be able to do a practice round of packing them. There’s a very good chance I won't be going anywhere, but somehow I know I’ll sleep better knowing I could. I’ll also rest easier, knowing that all the mouse toilets are cleaned up and Lindt's finest dark chocolate is safely stored in the refrigerator!
Image: Raindrops on a swimming pool on the island of Oahu - February 26th, 2006