Unaccustomed Earth

Between 2000 and 2007, I lived in eight different residences: Mom's, Dad's, Alumni Hall, Scheele Hall, University Park Apartments, College Apartments, Annapolis, and Bowie.  Since 2007, I have only lived in one place: our home.  I love our house.  I like that we began building our life as a family in it.  I like spending time in rooms I've decorated and on furniture I've picked out.  I like having enough space.  I like not having to pick up and move every year.

The one drawback of living in the same home for over four years is the accumulation of four years worth of stuff.  When I moved frequently, I got rid of the junk I didn't need because I didn't want to pack it up and move it.  Since moving into our house, though, it's been even easier to accumulate things because there is much more room here than we've had anywhere else.  This Spring, though, I realized that our house had reached full capacity.  We have had the three boxes of stuff that came from Dad's house sitting in our front room for several months because we didn't have anywhere to put it.  This started me on a mission to get rid of all the junk we don't need so I could make room for these boxes while also getting the house ready for the invasion of baby stuff that has already begun.

The biggest improvement is in our office.  This used to be a sort of junk room where we set stuff aside to get it out of the way.  We have had an ever increasing accumulation of computer guts on the floor in there, and even though we bought an extra bookshelf when I returned to grad school, there were books everywhere.  Sometimes I could clear enough room on my desk to set my laptop there.  But now:

The computer guts are gone!  I got rid of the books I don't need, so now all the books are all shelved-- properly!  That's worth repeating: I got rid of books!  I can take things in and out of the closet without everything crashing down on my head!  Both of our chairs can be pushed in all the way under our desks!

My desk resembles a workspace where a professional thinker could sit down and do some work!  All my graduate school notes and other important documents are organized and filed in my new filing cabinet!

Another type of junk I tend to accumulate is bathroom and personal care junk.  Yes, it kind of makes sense to keep an extra blow dryer and hair straightener on hand in case one breaks while I'm doing my hair.  It even makes sense to keep extra bottles of half used shampoo and conditioner in case I run out of those.  It does not make sense to keep three straighteners and two blow dryers I don't like enough for daily use in addition to a whole shelf full of extra shampoos, conditioners, and lotions.  Our linen closet, under sink storage, and bathroom cabinet are the places where I have been shoving these things for four years.  But now:

There is more than enough room in the linen closet for all of the carefully folded linens we own!  All the expired medicines are gone!  I actually know what products are in the cupboard under the sink and in the cabinet!  I can put something new in either of these places without shoving four other bottles out of the way!

The final place we put stuff to get it out of the way is our basement laundry and storage room.  We keep more permanent storage and less frequently used items like our Christmas tree and suitcases here, so this is where I was going to have to make room for the boxes from Dad.  Since we were taking the single bed out of the baby's room, we also had to make room for that to be stored in the basement.  The pile of boxes stacked up in the basement had begun to intrude so far into the laundry space that getting to the washer and dryer while holding the laundry basket required some impressive acts of contortion.  But now:

The boxes are out of the front room and the bed is out of the baby's room!  I am no longer hanging onto ten cans containing paint that is no longer be found anywhere in my house!  I can walk straight up to the laundry room sink and washer and dryer without the risk of bumping my ever growing belly!  A green sweater Vickie misplaced months ago is no longer wedged under the treadmill!

So that's what I've been up to in my off time for the past few weeks.  It feels great to have everything sorted, organized, and put away.  It's also nice to know that I not only made room for everything we want to keep but also made some extra room for the baby's stuff.  Making the big and small decisions about what to keep, what to donate, and what to trash was time consuming and at some points difficult, but I feel so relieved now that it is behind me.  Billy and I like to keep the house cleaned up, but we get so busy that it's easy to let the piles overwhelm our open spaces.  We stop and put everything away when the clutter starts to bother us, but this is the first time in a while those away areas are also neat and organized.  I also feel like I've learned an important lesson about how to keep stuff from overwhelming our space now that we've pleasantly settled into our home.  I don't know if anyone else cares about what the inside of my linen closet looks like, and plenty of people who are neater than me might look at these pictures and feel compelled to come re-organize my bathroom cupboard.  I wanted to write this post, though, as a reminder to myself to not let another four years pass before I make the effort to get rid of the stuff we don't need in order to make room for our sanity and the things we do.

Also, I wanted to write the post in order to admit that Billy was probably right when he first began claiming that I have begun nesting.  : )

(Unaccustomed Earth is a collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri about Indian immigrants living in various locations inside the US.  She borrows the title from a quote from a Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Custom-House" that she uses as an epigraph for the book.  He writes "Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn out soil.  My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, will strike their roots into unaccustomed earth."  The book is also fairly recent (2009), and if you're looking for something to read this summer which is smart and entertaining, I'd definitely recommend it.  I know a lot of the books I talk about here might have a limited audience outside academia, but this is not one of them.)