A Place for My Stuff

"Hoard & Clutter Syndrome"?

Not surprisingly, YouTube has some good clips on OCD news pieces and what not. I don't know why I never thought of searching on this before!  I'll be posting some of these from time to time. 

The Gift that Keeps on Giving, part 2

Continued from yesterday's story...

The reactions to these gifts were about as varied as the gifts themselves.  One of the first people in the circle ended up with the ham, and acted very happy about it.  It was honestly hard to tell if he really wanted to keep it, or he was being absolutely sarcastic about it.  But the longer he kept it and trading back for it, the less suspicious I became if it being a game of sarcasm.

I was most surprised with the mp3 players, and who they came from.  The young guy was known as a prankster and a scammer, and all throughout the week he was excited about he had done up these gifts with a Makers Mark bourbon tag and other things that would supposedly throw people off.  Yet inside were the little mp3 players.  He ended up with the office chair at some point.

The paper says "Yankee Swap Gift #1"

It seemed that the "good" gifts people wanted the most were the bottles of wine.  Nobody seemed to want the sled or the ergonomic pillow.  The lady who ended up with the two romantic comedy DVDs was really pissed off.  I'm sure it didn't help that my boss completely broke once of the cases when he stupidly tried to force it open, not realizing that it was one of those older DVD cases with the locking tabs on the side.

One of my co-workers was from Australia, and he and I ended up secretly laughing about the little hand statue showing the peace sign.  Because when you do that gesture with the back of the hand facing the person, it's basically the equivalent of "up yours".  This is known in the UK and Australia, but it's simply not part of American culture.  The lady who ended up with it had it on top of her bookshelf for the whole floor to see.  The winner wasn't the lady in this picture, though I do want to strangle her (more on that later).

The real "prize" though seemed to be that big jar of M&Ms.  It was filled with a number of gift certificates, including I think a $25 one for Starbucks.  Why somebody put this much money into a Yankee Swap gift, I have no idea.  But this other lady ended up with it, and she was never ever going to let it go.  Some people, including her, tried hiding her present out of view so that when people had the option of trading, they might have missed it as they looked about the room.  Invariably though, one of the managers wanted to trade.  And she refused.  In defiance of all rules to the game, all office etiquette, and any hope of maintaining a good working relationship with this guy, she wrapped her arms around the jar and kept refusing to give it up.  The manager eventually decided to be "nice" and trade elsewhere. 

 

Man, what a bitch!  The woman with the jar, that is.  My low opinions of her were only reinforced as I talked to her on my last day and she revealed a few things about her personal life.  That's a whole other story, but without getting into details, let's just say she treats wrapping paper better than the guys she dates.  And to further insult to injury, she's not even "all that".  That means rather ugly.

There was one prize though that absolutely NOBODY wanted.  Was it the gnome with the bubble-blowing asshole?  Nope.  It was that box of 30 VHS movies I brought in!  People were looking at that box, and me, as if I had brought in a box of Edison wax cylinders.  Christ, folks.  Is VHS really that arcane already?  I know DVD is the standard format now, but come on.  It's not like I brought in something your kids wouldn't still recognize.  I guess I was dealing with a crowd that would call a movie like The Matrix a golden oldie.

I saw that box being passed around from person to person.  One of the soccer moms (man, I hate soccer moms) announced that she had to leave early.  Well if you do that with a Yankee Swap, guess what?  You will not be there to trade your present, and will thus end up with whatever people jolly well give you.  Needless to say, that box ended up with her.

Or so I thought.  The next day, it was still sitting there in the common area.  At the partial suggestion of my boss's boss, I printed out a sheet saying "This is your gift from the Yankee Swap" and I think even added "(Yes, you must take this home.)"   When she finally came in, she brought the box over, picked out two Disney movies that she said her kids might like, and said she didn't want the rest.  I told her in some form or another, "Tough!  You left the Yankee Swap early, and now you have to take the consequences of that.  This is what you ended up with.  It's yours.  It's your responsibility to take it home now."

You know the woman who I said I wanted to strangle?  That was her.  Somehow she managed to talk the guy in the desk next to me into taking the box.  And of course, he just let it sit there by his desk.  So instead of being clutter in my home, it was now clutter 5 feet from my desk at work, and I'd see that damn box every day, knowing what it was.

This really, REALLY pissed me off on so many levels.  First of all, this arrogance of her to think that she shouldn't have to deal with this.  But more importantly, this wasn't about VHS.  This was about my psychological battle against clutter back home.  You might think this sounds silly, but convincing myself to part with these items, let alone finding a way to get rid of them, and then doing it, was not psychologically easy on my part.  I don't want to sound like some whiner playing the "victim" card, but this honestly was a mental challenge for me.  Just when I thought I had gotten rid of it, it was still sitting there.

A couple of months later I ended up being laid off from the company, as was the guy who took in the tapes.  But I wouldn't be surprised if they were still sitting there in that office.  At least NOW I'm rid of it.

Oh, and what did I end up with for a Yankee Swap gift?  A can of beer (which I gave to a co-worker; I can't stand the stuff), an elf action figure from the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer claymation, and a $25 gift certificate to a local music & movie store.  The figure still sits in my kitchen hallway collecting dust.  But I'd like to think of it as having been able to sell off those VHS tapes for twenty five bucks.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving, part 1

Last December, the company I was working for at the time had its annual holiday party.  Usually I end up skipping these.  My reasoning is: why would I want to spend my free time hanging out with the people I already see every day at work?  But this time I decided to go, particularly because of the Yankee Swap.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this custom, here it is in a nutshell.  Everybody at the party brings in a wrapped gift.  There's usually an expected price range that they advise people to use (e.g., "The value of the gift should be somewhere around $10").  Then, after a long system of trading the wrapped items, then unwrapping them and trading some more, everybody ends up leaving with one of the other gifts.  This is easier than having 20 people each trying to buy 19 presents for the other 19 people.

Different people have different ways of doing the trading process.  Though here's one typical method you might see.  Let's say you have 20 people at the party.  The numbers 1 through 20 are written on slips of paper and put into a hat, then each person pulls a number.  This determines the order.  Person #1 gets to pull a random present from the pile.  Then person #2, and so on.  Once everybody has a present, person #1 gets to swap it with somebody else in the cirlce.  Then it's person #2's term to do the same, and so on.  THEN the presents are unwrapped, and there's another round of swapping.  At some point there's a round where if it's your turn and you wish to keep your present instead of swapping, you can do so, but then the whole game ends and everybody is stuck with what they have.  In almost EVERY Yankee Swap I've ever been in, I ended up being the one who stopped the game.  Weird.

So...what was my gift?  We were told in the email that it could be a "serious" gift or it could be a "gag" gift.  It just couldn't be of negative value (e.g., trying to give your car's parking ticket to somebody else so that the receiver would have to pay).  Was this a hot opportunity to pawn off some of my junk?  YOU BET!

The gifts at the Yankee Swap that night were pretty varied.  A bottle of wine.  A sled.  An office chair that somebody wrapped.  mp3 players.  Another bottle of wine.  An entire ham, frozen.  A pair of DVDs (Definitely Maybe, Ocean's 13). An ergonomic back pillow.  A mechanical bubble-blowing gnome (the bubbles blew out its asshole).  A jar filled with M&Ms and some gift certificates.  MadLibs.  A weird art statue of a hand giving the peace sign.  And then there was mine: a box filled with about 30 VHS movies.

What happened?  Find out tomorrow...

Tiny rooms of clutter, and great big rooms of nothing

First, some more wit n' wisdom from Mad magazine.  This is from "The Lighter Side of...", one of the magazine's longest-running regular pieces.  It was the creation of cartoonist Dave Berg.  Even though this particular strip here was from 1972, it's still relevant today.

Leave it to kids (and Mad) to point out the world's hypocrisy!

When I was growing up, my mother complained how there was "no room" in our house.  It would always shock my friends when I told them that, because our house was HUGE.  We had one of the very few houses in the whole neighborhood with four levels.

The problem laid in how that space was distributed.  We had 3 tiny bedrooms, and taking up almost half the house was a living room whose purpose was...nothing! 

The ceiling must have been over 20 feet in one corner.  In that high corner there was a light bulb which had probably been there since before 1976.  Though that light was rarely turned on, for fear that the bulb would go out and have to be replaced.  So in other words, we never turned on the light, for fear that we eventually wouldn't be able to turn it on.  Go figure.  That corner was also where we had the out-of-tune piano.  The only other notable features of that warehouse of a room were the house's thermostat, the big dining table for holiday family gatherings (2 or 3 times a year tops), and the china cabinet of stuff too good to use.  

As I said in an earlier blog, my problem isn't that I just need a bigger home for my stuff.  Because as I said, I know that I would just end up filling the house just the same.  But is this the true luxury of living in a house instead of an apartment?  To be able to have big rooms that serve no practical purpose, except on Thanksgiving and Xmas?  Yes, I DO understand the concept of aesthetics.  Yes, I do believe that aesthetics outweigh practicality in some instances.  But from a clutter perspective, I say that if you have rooms you never use for months at a time, yet cause an avalanche when you open your bedroom closet, then something is wrong.

My parents retired down to Florida some years ago, and they moved into house that was just a fraction of this size.  At first, I didn't know how they were going to do it.  But when I thought about my old bedroom minus the old bedrooms of my siblings, and minus the enormous dining room and half of the kitchen, it works out to about the same.

College Roommates from Hell

I've been an avid fan of Mad magazine ever since I was a kid.  In 1998 they released a CD-Rom set that had scans of every page of every issue ever released up until that point, with a fully searchable database.  I decided to do a search on the word "clutter", and came up with a few hits.

One of these search results pointed to the cover article from issue #335, "College Roommates from Hell".  Sure enough, one of these type of nightmare roommates was "the clutter king".  I was going to post just that one, but some of the others gave me chuckle too, so here they are.  Thankfully I can't remember being stuck with any of these types.  Was I a "Clutter King"?  As far as I know, no.  I guess the problem came later, or just wasn't something I brought too much to campus.

More assorted oddities

Obviously, complaining about clutter doesn't make it go away.  As much I like pointing out the oddities of things here on this blog, I am honestly trying to get rid of stuff.  One of the problems is that I have a few huge boxes of stuff in my hallway that are all "eBay-able" items.  It's a matter of not only making auctions or Craigslist posts for the items, but getting them to sell.  It's a slow process.  If all else fails, then as a last resort I know I can give things to the local thrift store in exchange for a tax write-off.  But again, I'd rather do that only as a last resort.  It's not just about the money, but the content feeling I get knowing that some odd item I own is going into the hands of somebody who really wants it, instead of just sitting among the shelves at the thrift store.

So wanting to at least get SOMETHING done today, I picked up a large handled shopping back that I'd tossed next to my kitchen wastebasket, and tried to see if I could fill it with stuff to throw away.  Here are some things I found:

• DVD and CD slip covers.  I'm not talking about the cases or inlay cards, but the cardboard covers that slip over some DVDs and CDs (especially "special editions"), which must be slipped off first before opening the case.  What is there purpose?  Probably to make it look better in the stores.  So why do I keep them?  I guess it's that idea of "Well I paid $40 for this DVD set, and I'd hate to throw part of that away, thus making it an incomplete version of what I bought."  But if they prevent the item from fitting in a rack, and have to be dealt with every time you want to use the damn thing, then why keep them?  Even if I decide to sell these off someday, I don't kid myself into thinking the slip cover is going to make it worth that much more.

However, I didn't blindly just throw ALL of them away.  I did, in fact, find an autographed cover to a set of Eartha Kitt CDs.  Although I have other autographs and a photograph from the time I met her in person, I had forgotten that she autographed this one too.  There is absolutely nothingjunkish about an autograph from a deceased celebrity.  Yes, I will admit that some junk can be valuable.  Unfortunately it only seems to happen to 1% of it.

• Peacock feathers. A friend of mine gave these 5 enormous peacock feathers.  And they stood hanging out from the CD racks in the corner of my living room.  Then they made their way to hanging out from some plastic bin in my living room.  They're looking quite stringy, and just don't go with anything.  So I'm just going to let these things expire gracefully by getting them out of site and into the trash.  This is a bachelor pad, not NBC.

• More paper oddities.  Printed driving directions from the internet, the book of Spanish instructions to my waterproof iPod boom box, 90-day warranty cards for things I've bought over 5 years ago, 2002 homecoming brochure, math doodles as always, and my change of address notice from Fleet bank (which doesn't even exist any more).

• CDs of local bands, label samplers, etc.  As mentioned in a previous blog.  Boy I've wound up with a ton of these.  And honestly, I can't see myself listening to them.  I suppose there's that thought of "Well if this band makes it big, then people will pay a lot of money to get a hold of old demos like this."  Though that's highly doubtful to happen with a lot of these bands.  Most of these will probably wind up at the thrift store.  As I might have mentioned before, the music stores that cary used CDs typically won't take anything that doesn't have a barcode or isn't part of a known label.

Even after putting the CDs aside in that begrudging "I'll get to this later" category, I managed to fill two huge bags of trash.  I figure that if I just make this a daily routine, I'll free up a good 20 cubic feet of space in a week.

Joe Franklin's Office

When I saw Joe Franklin's office in The Aristocrats, the audience gasped and giggled in disbelief.  My thoughts were.  "Hmm.  I can relate."

 

What's going to happen to this stuff when he dies?  I wonder who will seize it.  Hopefully the owner of the building won't blindly throw away 50 years worth of showbiz. There's probably a scotch glass that Frank Sinatra drank out of, buried somewhere in there.  Not that I'd want to be the one to have to dig it up.

Oh and if you haven't seen The Aristocrats yet, do check it out.  UNLESS, that is, you are a prude.  Because I'm warning you right now: there are phrases in the movie that are so tasteless and offensive, they make Andrew "Dice" Clay's act sound like prime-time.  Otherwise, the cast reads like a who's-who of comedy.

Get it off the floor!

If I had to list one explicit goal I'd like to accomplish in my clutter clean-up, it this: get everything off the floor!

Here's a quote from good ol' Don Aslett's book Clutter's Last Stand.  It's actually just meant to refer to the floor spaces in closets, but I think it applies to floors in general:

Get stuff off the floor.  Floor mess is about the most psychologically devastating of all messes.  Most closets have a lot of unused upper room.  A few dollars worth of material and a spare hour or two and you can install (or barter with a friend to install) a second of third shelf above the one over the hanger rod.  This makes more room for worthwhile keepables.

I have a habit of leaving DVDs and CDs lying around in stacks around the couch or entertainment center.  The sad thing is, I do in fact have the shelf space.  It's just a matter of getting into the good habit of putting stuff back when I'm done.  That's always been a problem for me.  Today I walked around the living room and picked up about 30 DVDs from the floor.  Then I went a few steps further.

I've had a rack of 50 or 60 VHS tapes sitting in my living room (you can in fact see part of it in the banner photo above, behind the first "F").  They're all home recorded stuff, and last spring I spent a week or two converting it all to DVD-R.  But instead of throwing them right into the trash, I've been meaning to recycle them since I heard VHS is one of those physical media that could be "hazardous" when carelessly trashed in bulk.  I found a box in my kitchen that other boxes were resting on, but itself was empty.  I moved the tapes into the box and stowed that away for later (though hopefully not TOO much later).  Then I moved a box near my living room window that had no immediate use, and stuck that in another room.  In its place, I put the VHS rack and filled it with the DVDs I had lying around.

So in one job, I managed to 1) get rid of another box sitting around in my kitchen, 2) move a box in my living room that I didn't need immediate access to, 3) moved the VHS tapes to their own box for later recycling, 4) freed up a rack I could use for DVDs, 5) stuck that in the convenient spot and filled it with the DVDs.

What did we learn today?

• If you have a box of stuff that doesn't need frequent access, then there's no need to keep it within arm's reach in the living room.
• When dejunking your home, you can often kill 2 or more birds with 1 stone.
• Multi-media shelves are pretty handy.  They can hold any combination of DVDs, CDs, VHS, etc.  These are usually better than racks that have slots for the cases, because you can fit a bigger variety of stuff, and it's easy to reorder things without having to take cases out of the slots one at a time to move things further down.
• Get the crap off the floor!

Have a Nice Day

Taking a break from the clutter combat today, to bring you another great George Carlin routine that shows up on his A Place for My Stuff album.

Inherited Clutter: Just Say No

As I might have mentioned before, I view this whole clutter issue as my own problem.  And when it comes to life's problems, I believe in taking self-responsibility.  I do ultimately "blame" myself for the state I'm in, but I'm not self-loathing about it. I have never been an advocate of 12-step programs (and yes, there is a 12-step program out there for pack rats).  That's because 12-step programs are based on the concept of you being powerless, and having to turn to a "higher power" for the solution.  Maybe groveling and self-loathing work for some people, but not me.

Having said all that, I can certainly point out another one of those long-time sources of clutter: parents.  How many times have you visited them, only to leave with two or three boxes of stuff?  And it keeps happening over the years.  Why?  Mainly because it's hard for us to say "no" in front of them.  There's some sort of guilt attached to it (if not laid on thick by the parents) for either rejecting a generous offer, or not taking your share of post-holiday junk.  Sometimes you just want to humor them by taking it.

Should it be my responsibility to say "no"?  Sure.  But that doesn't change the facts here.  Visiting your parents and other relatives CAN indeed lead to clutter.  My parents live 1,500 miles away from me, so it's not unusual for me to have to mail stuff back since my suitcases only hold so much.

Even aside from clutter, I have noticed that when I get into an argument with my parents, it usually follows this pattern:

1. One or both parents offer something to me.  This could be an offer to take something home with me, or one of 12 different Thanksgiving side dishes to put on a plate that only holds 7, or something to wear in different weather, or their help to find a lost item, or suggestions on where to find that lost item, or who knows what else.
2. I politely decline their offer.
3. Actions 1 and 2 repeat themselves every 15 seconds for the next ten minutes.
4. I get annoyed at this point, and start being more firm and less polite when I decline the decline offer for the 41st time.
5. Parent takes offense to this, accusing me of being rude or ungrateful.

I have tried to deal with this in different ways.  For example, one time at Xmas dinner, I thought I could stop the argument before it started by literally announcing, "Before I begin eating, I would like to take this time to announce that my plate can only hold so many fixings here, and I will not be able to get everything in one round.  So if there's something you do not see featured on my dinner plate, there's no need to ask about it.  I WILL GET AROUND TO IT."  Well, that just started the fighter earlier.  And forget about trying to put forward a logical argument; parents simply can't distinguish between intelligent debate and personal attack.

However, last Xmas I did find a method that works.  Basically, when it comes time for me to do step #2, I just pick a particular line to use, and keep repeating it on every round.  In order for this to work though, you MUST use the same exact wording, and make it louder and louder (and/or more and more annoying) every time it's your turn.  You can use a sillier and sillier voice, like a voice that gets more and more heavily accented to the point of sounding ridiculous.  Throw in wild dancing gestures if you have to.  Also, make sure you smile through the whole thing. Become happier and happier with each turn.  If they ask "Why are you talking like that?" or "What's the deal with" some gesture you use, don't answer.  Just stick with the line.  Eventually, they'll realize that they don't want to hear you repeat the same line again and back off.

Here's how I successfully warded off taking home several entire boxes of hard candy and candy canes which I knew would only sit around my apartment for the next 6 months uneaten, but wouldn't fit in my suitcase anyway.

Mom: "Billy, do you want some of these candies?"
Me: "Nope, I'm already takin' more than one man can handle."

2 minutes later...

Mom: "Billy, do you want some of these candies?"
Me (adding an annoying southern accent drawl): "Nope, I'm already a-takin' more than one maaaan can handle!"

Another 2 minutes go by...

Mom: "Billy, take some of these candies!"
Me (even louder, and throwing in a more emphasized cowboy yodel): "Nooooope, I'm already a-takin' moooooooore than one maaaaaaaan can handle!"
Mom: [disgusted glare]
Me: [dopey smile, frozen in place]
Mom: "Oh great, so this is all going to go to waste", followed by other guilt-tripped mutterings.
Me:  "Well, it's like I said," throwing my hands up in the air like I'm holding some 6-shooters, and shaking my hips, shouting "Umma ready a-takin' mo' danno MAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNN can handle!"

At this point she probably realized that hearing that line one more time from me was a worse fate than keeping those god damn candies.  So it ended.  I got on that plane knowing I'd have one less pile of crap on my living room floor.

And before I get any hate mail from self-righteous mama's boys: let me just state for the record that I do love my parents and have a great relationship with them.  But when you've known anybody for many years, you learn about their annoying aspects as well.  I've realized that I can't spend more than 72 straight hours with them under the same roof until all hell breaks loose.  Here's one final tip: scheduling two three-day trips will do more for family relationships than trying to spend one annual full week together.