Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Junk and Your Life

I don’t know about you, but I’m a horrible packrat, and as I’ve aged, I’ve developed the volunteerism virus. Things have gotten tricky, so lately I’ve had this urge to streamline. With all the modern emphasis on feng shui and uncluttering your life, I’ve started to wonder if I’ve taken too much on, given myself too many choices every day, filled everything from the house to the car with too much stuff. In other words, I’ve started to worry I’ve got too much junk in all my trunks!

But I have changed my mind. It’s not so bad to have a cluttered life. To wit:

1) The big one is the fact that a recent health scare with my baby involved a sudden ICU stay for her and crazy times for the adults. Separated from our home of pack-rattiness, we still had the minivan and its wealth of useful items to see us through several nights before anyone had to make the trip to the house and away from the baby.

2) My sister was involved in the hospital adventure, cancelling an important buiness conference in order to be with the family. When the baby was released to recover at home, I convinced my sister to catch a flight to her conference anyway, even though she had a tiny window of opportunity and none of her things with her. I opened up the pack-ratted contents of my attics and closets to clothe and accessorize her. I also had ample travel-sized cosmetics and shampoos another more streamlined person may have used or discarded. And to think all the “Organize Your Life!” gurus insist you should send everything you don’t actively use to Goodwill! If I did that to my closet, for example, the only things left would be 9 pairs of yoga/sweat pants and 5 stained up T-shirts.

3) I belong to several groups and clubs, all of which place certain demands on my time. I had been considering eliminating one or two of them until I pulled from the resources of all the groups during the aforementioned health scare. One group’s members are bringing our family meals now that we’re home yet still crazed, one group’s members covered for me with some professional responsibilities, and one group’s members helped me find food and lodging near the hospital, as well as provided company during the times I wasn’t allowed to be with the baby. If I’d uncluttered my schedule and cut some of those groups, I wouldn’t have found help as easy to come by.

4) During Halloween, we did several activities (cluttered lifestyle!) and needed several costume changes of varying degrees of warmth. While we had not pre-purchased the necessary items for more than one set of family costumes, I have an entire army’s worth of vintage clothes and costumery in my rather frightening attic. Want to be a pumpkin fairy? No problem! The Scooby Gang? It’s all up there!

5) A friend who has an unbearably cluttered car, even worse than mine, unexpectedly ran out of the medication she takes every day. Instead of suffering withdrawel symptoms until her pharmacy cooperated, she found a lone pill in the floor of her car. Voila! Muss means less fuss!

6) Our minivan of pack-rattiness has saved us on other occasions when the kids (or adults) needed a change of clothes, something to eat, or something to read or play. Stuck in a traffic jam? Have I got a book for you! Hell, maybe even a portapotty. Whatever we needed was in there…somewhere (probably along with the rest of my friend’s missing prescription).

7) An opportunity to participate in a project along with the authors on the Samhain Paranormal blog sprang up in October. This op involved writing a story in a shared world called “Dunvegas.” Normally because of the rest of the clutter in my life (those darn sickly kids!), I find it challenging to produce fiction in a short space of time and on demand. However, because I had packratted away story ideas and the notes I’d written for a novel set in the same location as “Dunvegas”, I was able to play, and the results are just awesome….which you can see for free! Dunvegas PDF

8) When somebody else — often somebody in one of my groups or family — needs something, almost anything, I find it very satisfying to disappear into the attic and emerge victorious with the requested item or reasonable facsimile in hand. Be it a romance novel, a pair of authentic shoes from the 70’s or a baby carrier, I’m like the great white suburban hunter, only I don’t have to go to the mall, just upstairs.

9) Same goes with my computer files. I save everything. Email from 2001? I’ve got it. Links from the research I did on brown recluse spiders? Saved somewhere and backed up in triplicate.

10) Even this blog entry is the result of clutter. We’ve been in the hospital for the past I don’t know how long and didn’t get home until last night. But instead of cancelling on my appointed blog time, I clicked through some of my blog entry ideas and found one that I could apply to my current situation. It all started with the pill in my friend’s car, but my junk justificaiton was definitely compounded this week.

Junk, junk, junk. Bring it on!

Jody W.
A SPELL FOR SUSANNAH—Winter 2008, Samhain Publishing
www.jodywallace.com * meankittybox.blogspot.com