Marie & Pandora
While revisiting Marie Kondo, the decluttering queen, I determined that she and her ilk are for rich people. Well, at least folks who don’t struggle to make ends meet.
My late husband had a bit of a hoarding instinct. He kept everything—just in case. There were cartons of stuff on his side of the closet. His dresser was stacked near to the ceiling, and the top two drawers were reserved for an assemblage of items other than clothes. Our storage shed contained trunks of miscellany he’d collected since childhood.
From what I gather about said childhood, the family was not always flush. There was sometimes struggle to get everyone fed, clothed, and shod. Hence there was a tendency to save things—just in case.
When we first got married, my sweetie and I also struggled financially. I remember the day he lost a twenty-dollar bill on his way home from an errand. He spent the next hour bicycling around the neighborhood searching—as if it would sit there waiting for him. Yup, we were the kind of folks who saved things—just in case. I’m sure we ate mightily precious leftovers that night.
Later in life, we didn’t need to be so guarded about our scruffy possessions. We could afford to buy new things from time to time. And I took to “spring cleaning” the house annually to clear away dustballs and sleepy spiders and make… well … space. This was hard for him. An empty surface was like a beacon for stuff. His just-in-case mentality was steadfast.
Widowed three years now, I’m still cleaning. I have money enough to buy a new toothbrush when I need one, and I lean toward electric—so I don’t need to save the 10 manual toothbrushes that I’ve collected from the dentist. Or the five pill-splitters my insurance company sent me. Along with pill boxes and thermometers. Somebody else can use them. They’re not providing anybody a service in my closet.
I can do the Marie Kondo routine with abandon. My husband isn’t here to inhibit me—and I can afford to toss things even if I might wind up needing them later. (Although I am not one prone to dumping the old just to buy new and improved versions of things. I’m still using the blender somebody gave my mother, second-hand, when she lost everything to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.)
A friend and fellow widow recently Marie Kondoed her way from a normal sized two-bedroom home to a “tiny house.” You know—the kind you can haul from one place to another with a big truck?
During her move, my friend offered me a mini-greenhouse kit—still in the carton. Something I never would have purchased. But my hubby and I used to garden. I was intrigued. So, I locked Marie Kondo in the closet (which she’d recently helped me empty), and turned to the big box I hadn’t yet sorted through: Pandora’s box. I opened it, and out popped the old adage, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
The mini greenhouse is perfect for sprouting seedlings. It’s amazing—four shelves of humid luxury for baby veggies and flowers, and takes up less than six square feet of floor space.
When I let Marie out of the closet, she asked, “What are you going to do with this thing once the seedlings are in the ground?”
I know my present-day garden might be just a whim. It’s a lot of work. And I can afford veggies. And even flowers. But I looked her square in the eye and said, “I’ll save it—just in case.”