It’s Gotta Go!
Covered in plastic and dust, a brown cedar chest sits in the middle of a pile of furniture.
“It’s gotta go,” I say to Cheryl, my go to for questions now that we’re in deep with house renovation projects. “But how can I throw it out when all I see is my Mom?”
The initials EBC adorn the hulking dark brown box one would hardly call furniture. More storage container than centerpiece, that thing you find deep in the basement, filled with items you forgot you owned.
“I’m guessing she had it with her at Westover, which means high school,” I add when defending why it exists in the middle of our living room, and the first thing you see when entering our house. “It’s broken and ugly,” I admit. “But when I look at it, I see my Mom. I’m guessing you have a couple of things in your house that remind you of your mom?”
This chest, and a wooden chair mom used to fall asleep in, both such pieces. “And this one’s gotta go?” I think. “Won’t it make the rest of sorting easier if I can first walk through this emotionally fraught door?” I offer Cheryl.
Our house is turned completely upside down and yesterday the dam broke for both me and Mary. After weeks and weeks of various workers in the house doing a whole range of projects, we stood in the kitchen with our contractor and said “no mas”. We also said, “don’t listen to us and keep going”. Such is the painful rhythm of renovation. My message to you. Don’t do it.
We live in a modest Victorian, each room’s contents now covered with plastic to prevent the dust from getting on the furniture. An oxymoron. One can’t prevent the dust from getting on everything, so why do we even try? Weeks and weeks, no months of projects finally pushes us to a break. First the foundation, then moths and rodents, followed by insulation, painting, rugs, blinds and finally HVAC. But who are we kidding? We will never be done. We live in a hundred year-old house with all its nooks and crannies, and will soon move on to painting the outside, redoing the front steps, and closing a gaping hole various birds and bats call home.
“Are you preparing to sell it?” a question we keep hearing.
“No.”
“Then why would you put yourselves through this?” the intimation.
“Wait, let me get this straight. You lived a 100 year-old house, sold it, and then bought another? Why?” the house inspector asked when walking through it with us a dozen years ago.
We are not preparing to sell it, but all of this work does put in question why we own the stuff we do. When, for weeks on end, you are relegated to a couple of rooms and a handful of personal items, you come to question everything.
“Even though we have too much of it, I like having my stuff around me,” Cheryl says. “I’m stacking pictures on the walls now, because we have so many.” She’s got an eye for what goes with what, so the stacking works.
“How do you and John agree?” I ask, incredulous.
“Ha! I don’t ask,” she says laughing. “And after a few weeks, he’ll wonder out loud if I’ve moved a painting around.”
“Genius!” I think, and realize that a house’s comes alive over time, versus in one fell swoop. Mary and I have been making decisions one piece at a time, sneaking something new onto the wall for expediency, while slowly acquiring pieces from our parents.
“Early attic,” the nicest thing another designer friend says to us when looking around the house, implying that everything’s gotta go.
There’s a whole industry dedicated to our problem. Marie Condo one of its greatest celebrities, though she’s hung up her uber organized sock drawer. Her third child the breaking point. For me, the breaking point comes when given the choice to live my life, or sort my stuff. Give me life, and given the state of my mother’s affairs when she left us, I’d say the apple didn’t fall far from the mother tree.
“Don’t blame that one on me,” she’d always say when I lamented my near complete lack of organizational prowess. I see and hear my mom quite often, though she’s been gone for over fifteen years. She the person I’d call to talk about the disaster that is our house.
“Don’t worry,” she’d say, or something else to comfort my anxiety. “You’ll be glad you did it when it’s over and it’s hot out.”
Actually, she might not have said such a thing as we never had central AC in any of our houses growing up. “Not worth it,” her more likely response learning of this latest extravagance. “Do you think money grows on trees?” This from a woman who asks New York City cab drivers for a quarter back on her fare.
We’re surrounded by our stuff, and it’s gotta go. You don’t paint all the walls in your house then just turn around and hang the same pieces up in the same place. But then again, who in their right mind paints an entire house while trying to live in it.
“That’s crazy,” my mom would have said, sitting in her wooden chair now resting in the corner of our bedroom. “Nobody in their right mind paints an entire house unless they are selling it.”
“Now you tell me,” I’d say back.
“I thought you knew,” surely her final retort.
