What to Do with the Stuff

What to do about STUFF.

Did I mention that we are moving? And I don’t just mean to Mexico for the summer.

Last month we had to pack up our entire house and put most of our belongings into storage because we are in the process of buying a house. (I tried to explain to my husband that the summer you are buying a house is perhaps NOT the ideal summer to take your family abroad for two months… but he disagreed.)

I am also an elementary school teacher. Last week I spent no less than 18 hours sorting, packing and cleaning up my classroom. It is a painful ritual that is tolerated only for the sense of relief and closure it brings.

So I have been swimming in stuff. As I cleared out the corners and crevices of both my home and work place I was confronted with unfathomable quantities of, there is no better word for it: crap. Toys, clothes, writing tools, books, plastic containers, the list goes on. It would have taken me endless hours to properly sort, repair and catalogue each item, so I ended up throwing many things away. If it wasn’t “like new,” I trashed it. If I hadn’t used it in the past six months, I tossed it. If it wasn’t part of a set, it was headed for the landfill. Single marbles, individual Legos, notebooks with only two written pages, half-sized pencils, partially used markers and pens, single socks (dozens of them!), stained shirts, torn stuffed animals and pillows, puzzles with one piece missing, games with no directions, outdated technology (“Where did we get that printer anyway?” “What the heck is that power chord for?”), reams of sheets of paper that would be good if they weren’t faded around the edges and I had somewhere to put them, the list goes on. I cringed with each sacrificial item, feeling as if I were appeasing the God of Capitalism and consumption, and somehow losing my soul in the process.

Every year when I open up my classroom I swear it is going to be different. Next year I won’t waste so much. Each time we move (about once every 3 – 5 years) we pledge to buy less and reuse more. My husband, the Carbon Scientist, is better about this. He lives in his three pairs of pants and four dress shirts that he washes only when I insist, and could fit all of his belongings into two boxes if he had to. But when the rat race gets moving and it’s all I can do to make sure everyone is dressed and fed and at work on time, conservation goes on the back burner. Convenience rules the day.

As I prepare for Mexico, I find myself stuck in the same quandary. On the one hand, I know we could get by with only the basics. We don’t need a thing beyond a few clothes. Patching together the rest and meeting our needs there would be part of the adventure. On the other I am worried we won’t have enough or the right stuff. Will they have the right kind of sunscreen? Should I get bug spray with no deet? Shouldn’t I bring those dorky hats with the flap down the neck so my kids don’t get cancer? Do we have enough books? We need more books. What if we want to fly a kite? What if the kids get bored and drive me nuts? We’ll need more toys. I need another / different pair of shoes. What if we get sick from the food? Should I bring my own meds? And on and on. Slowly but surely our one bag has ballooned in to three.

So what does this have to do with carbon?

I feel like this summer we are heading to the source. Beyond the shelves of Target, before the factories in Honduras and China, all the “crap” originates in, and is destined for, a single element: carbon. The building block of all living substance. If we can come to understand all of the things we produce, consume and throw away as more than just clutter and trash, but as pieces of a larger system connected intimately to the very air we breathe, perhaps there is hope. Perhaps there will be change.

For now, I find comfort in that extra bottle of SPF 50 paraben-free sunscreen. In August, I hope to feel differently.