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The Goodbye Baby

~ Adoptee Diaries

The Goodbye Baby

Tag Archives: Stuff

The Great Photo Purge

25 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by elainepinkerton in Adoption

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Adopted daughter, Albums, birthparents, Deacquisitioning, Decluttering, Photographs, Purging, Stuff

 

Last week I bought several books from op.cit, my favorite used book store. The best one turned out to be Barbara Sher’s Live the Life you Love in Ten Easy Step-by-Step Lessons (1996).

In it, I discovered a great chapter titled “Clear the Decks for Action.” Sher points out that we cling to our stuff because we’ have the illusion that it will someday be useful and that a world of projects await us. We hold on to potential projects “so that we’ll never be bored”.
Long before the Marie Kondo craze, this bestselling author told the truth about having too much. To quote, “Clutter is a tribute to indecision” and it “gives the illusion that you’re surrounded by projects just waiting to be done.”
Her description of the seductive power of “stuff”describes my situation perfectly:
Everything in your house calls to you. There isn’t an item in your house that isn’t talking to you. It’s saying ‘clean me, read me, fold me, finish me, take me to Aunt Jane’s house, answer me, write me —get your messages, return this here, take that there — it’s a din…[but] for whatever purpose you were put on the planet, it couldn’t be to organize clutter.

These photo boxes were stuffed. Now empty, they’re headed for a garage sale

After countless garage sales, years of saying that I was going to downsize, and believing that I would someday get organized, I finally admitted that I needed help. Enter Wanda, a professional organizer. With her as co-purger. I began ruthlessly dredging through decades of acquisitions and archives. Donating, pitching, selling or otherwise getting stuff gone for good.
After conferring at the kitchen table for nearly an hour, Wanda and I agreed that photos and scrapbooks would be the best place for me to begin. We went through boxed photos from every decade of my life, beginning with the years before I was adopted. Wanda removed the photographs from envelopes and pitched duplicates and negatives. I reviewed stack after stack of photos, saving only one or two from every vacation, event, outing, rite of passage of my children, every marathon, ski trip or bicycle trek I’d ever taken. I started three small boxes of photos I’d keep – one for me and one for each of my sons.
I’ve discovered some treasures from the past that I didn’t realize that I had. They were buried under layers of the past, and they had to do with my adoption.
Here was an album that my birthfather, Giovanni Cecchini, had kept for forty years. It had photos I’d sent him as an adult (after our initial reunion), clips of articles I’d written, and highlights of my teenage and adult years. I’d had no idea he’d been keeping all of that. My stepmother, his second wife (after Velma, my birth mom) had saved it for me. Attached was a sticky note that read “I believe Elaine will appreciate having this album.”
Another surprise was a collection of album pages from my birthmother.They comprised pictures of Velma’s parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, none of whom ever knew of my existence. She was apparently a woman who kept the various compartments of her life completely separated. It amazed me that I’d never even seen that gallery of pictures. I’m not even sure how they came into my possession. The missing puzzle pieces filled in, but the puzzle still remained.
In previous purging campaigns, I’d mainly shuffled things around. Now, with the organizer by my side, I am actually removing excesses from the house. Photos were merely the beginning. Next frontier: the kitchen. Awaiting Wanda and me are the closets, the garage, the guest room and beyond. My new motto: Dare to be Spare!

*********************************************************************

Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for a fresh look at the world from an adoptee’s point of view. Her newest suspense novel Clara and the Hand of Ganesh, sequel to All the Wrong Places, is nearing completion. Do you have a decluttering story? Feedback invited.

 

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Adopting Simplicity

08 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by elainepinkerton in Adoption

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

adoption, Dealing with Adoption, Garage Sales, Simplifying, Stuff

The past few weeks in this high desert city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, temperatures

When customers weren't buying, we ended up trading with one another.

When customers weren’t buying, we ended up trading with one another.

soared from the sixties to the eighties. Spring suddenly turned into Summer. Along with newly blooming roses, colorful signs for neighborhood garage sales began popping up. Like many others, I’d been saving all manner of possessions to “repurpose” them after our long, cold winter ended.
Yep, you guessed it — I decided to join neighbors in staging a two-day yard sale. It happened last weekend. Labeling, putting up signs and balloons, advertising in local papers, schlepping everything over to my friend’s house…it was a ton of work. True, a lot sold and I made a decent amount of money. Toward the end of the sale, I simply gave a lot away. We all did. But, to be honest, it was exhausting and ridiculously time-consuming. I vowed to quit letting stuff creep into my house.
.
 Every possession, it’s been said, is a responsibility. Even after the recent sale, I still have too many books, clothes, shoes, housewares, books, office supplies, garden supplies…too much of EVERYTHING.
Writing my adoption memoir The Goodbye Baby-A Diary about Adoption gave me

Hard to believe no one wanted my Salton Yogurt Maker.

Hard to believe no one wanted my Salton Yogurt Maker.

the reality check I needed. It was so liberating to review four decades of past emotional “baggage” and then burning the diaries themselves, I realized that my too-much-stuff problem could also be tackled. The late diaries went up in smoke, and that gave me courage. It was OK to get rid of something that had once been precious. In publishing my “diary book,” I’d saved the essence of those journals, which was all I needed: First the diaries, then the house and everything in it. There is no turning back.
Nature abhors a vacuum; my perpetual need to purge is living proof. But, I will gain the upper hand! Just as I’ve replaced my old negative thinking about adoption (healthy acceptance is the aim), I’m revising my attitude toward possessions. De-acquisition-ing is my new goal. Divesting. Streamlining. Simplifying.

Less time organizing and caring for things and more time to simply LIVE. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again:
*Use it or LOSE it.
*LESS is MORE.
*Empty is BEAUTIFUL

Join Elaine most Mondays for reflections on Adoption and Life.

Join Elaine most Mondays for reflections on Adoption and Life.

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Goofy gets the Boot

26 Monday May 2014

Posted by elainepinkerton in Adoption

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Adoption recovery, Creativity, De-cluttering, Diaries, Liberation, memoir, Purge, Simplify, Streamlining, Stuff

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other WritingsIMG_0003

A year ago, I decided to get serious about re-purposing my old friend Mickey Mouse. I sold Mickey, Minnie and a host of other stuffed toys.  Because they were smaller, I kept Bugs Bunny and Goofy. Now even they have to go… I’m  once again de-cluttering.

Staging yet another garage sale is the only way I can escape the “too much stuff” syndrome. All of May, I’ve been walking around my house, collecting things with which I must part, labeling, pricing, and stacking said stuff in a spare room.
This personal de-acquisitioning campaign started with the publication of my adoption memoir The Goodbye Baby-A Diary about Adoption. It was so liberating to review four decades of past emotional “baggage” and then burning the diaries themselves, I realized that my too-much-stuff problem could be tackled. The late diaries went up in smoke, and that gave me courage. It was OK to get rid of something that had once been precious. In publishing my “diary book,” I’d saved the essence of those journals, which was all I needed: First the diaries, then the house and everything in it. There was no turning back.goodbyeBabyCover
My house is too big and yet not big enough. I have, from time to time, had grown children temporarily moving back home. Finally I gave up on having a guest room and declared that part of my home as the re-launching pad. Gone were my extra cabinets and shelves, dressers, bookshelves and desk drawers. I knuckled under and gradually removed my stuff from “their” space.
Do I get my precious storage space back? I wish! The adult child moves on but the stuff remains. This situation has forced me to take a serious look at all my now “extra” ousted-from-the-guest-room belongings. Turns out that a few friends, for various reasons, are  also being overwhelmed by possessions.  As a last resort, we’ve scheduled yet another garage sale.
This weekend my friends and I will be selling our excesses. Whatever doesn’t sell, we will give to charity. Our motto: This tyranny of things is exhausting and we’re not going to take it anymore.
Must sign off now, as the kitchen and dining room tables are loaded up with items that must be priced and relegated to the garage sale mountain.
*Use it or LOSE it.
*LESS is MORE.
*Empty is BEAUTIFUL

Join Elaine every Monday for reflections about life after Adoption Recovery.

Join Elaine every Monday for reflections about life after Adoption Recovery.

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Goodbye, Mickey Mouse

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by elainepinkerton in Adoption, Dealing with Adoption

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Creativity, Decluttering, Diaries, Liberation, memoir, Purge, Simplifying, Streamlining, Stuff

Things are in the saddle and ride mankind, said Ralph Waldo Emerson…

Bound for the Garage Sale of the Century

Stacked up for the Garage Sale of the Century

*Use it or LOSE it.
*LESS is MORE.
*Empty is BEAUTIFUL.

I have decided to get serious about re-purposing my old friend Mickey Mouse. I’m also getting rid of Minnie and a host of other stuffed toys. You guessed it, I’m de-cluttering.

A good friend was having trouble selling the family home. She’d already bought a small, perfect condo and needed to make the old, now-too-big house more attractive. She had multiple garage sales, sold and gave away more than half of what she owned. The family home started looking more beautiful. In a few weeks, furnished only sparsely, it sold.

After 38 years spent living in the same home, I started been buying books about simplifying. I’ve purchased containers for organizing and drawn up schedules for downsizing. I’m perpetually “gearing up” to purge, but instead of ridding myself of disorderly possessions, I spend too many hours keeping track of them.

Truth be told, all the organizational tools undermined me. Purchasing wondrous bins, cute cubes, file cases and photo boxes ended up creating – guess what! – more clutter. But this tyranny of things is exhausting and I’m not going to take it anymore.

Writing my adoption memoir The Goodbye Baby-A Diary about Adoption gave me the reality check I needed. It was so liberating to review four decades of past emotional “baggage” and then burning the diaries themselves, I realized that my too-much-stuff problem could also be tackled. The late diaries went up in smoke, and that gave me courage. It was OK to get rid of something that had once been precious. In publishing my “diary book,” I’d saved the essence of those journals, which was all I needed: First the diaries, then the house and everything in it. There was no turning back.ResizeImageHandler.ashx

I’m not selling my house,  but I was so inspired by my friend’s example, I vowed to halt this unhealthy servitude to stuff. Point one: the home office. I’m sad to report that after eight hours of dredging, I have yet to reach bottom. Only myself to blame, however. A serious office supply addiction ended up burdening me with envelopes enough to run a third world country for a year, pens and pencils that filled five shoe boxes, reams of white paper, hundreds of partially-used spiral notebooks, and three-ringed binders enough for a every grade of a school in Nepal.

Nothing to do but soldier on! I now look at STUFF as an enemy that smothers me, crowds me, muffles my creativity and keeps me from writing. I’m getting used to the beauty of EMPTY. A drawer with nothing in it. A closet with just a few hangers.

imagesMust sign off now, as the bed is loaded up with a mountain of junk that has to be labeled before removal to the garage sale department. Otherwise, no sleep tonight…

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Elaine Pinkerton Coleman

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