April 27--Someone really needs to invent a kitchen table that comes with an incineration switch. That way, I could instantly be rid of all the junk mail, newspapers, magazines, yellowing homework assignments and order sheets for long-past PTA fundraisers that stack up on my table day after day.
But because the world's brightest minds are too busy inventing driverless cars, watches that make phone calls and other ridiculous things, my fiery table of purification is still just a dream. I have to get rid of that clutter the old-fashioned way -- piece by piece, day after day, with no hope of keeping any surface clear for more than a few hours.
At times like this I wish for the sort of house you see in fancy architectural magazines, a glass and steel box whose living room holds nothing more than a thin wafer of a couch and some weird metal sculpture. I would spend my days staring out the window, contemplating the trees as I sip espresso from a tiny cup and stroke the head of my faithful Weimaraner, Rolf.
Other times I want to move into one of those fashionable micro-houses where there's barely space for a toothbrush, much less an army of Happy Meal toys. Shorn of almost every possession, I would swiftly achieve enlightenment and become one with the universe, filled with a peace that surpasses understanding.
I imagine all this and smile. Then I step on a Bionicle.
That's when I go off on a tidiness rampage, getting rid of everything that isn't nailed down. Any clothes my kids haven't worn in three months are bound for Goodwill. Any piece of furniture awaiting repairs is history. Old DVDs, half-filled paint cans, kitchen implements I've never used -- all of it is gone.
But just as I reach the peak of my righteousness, I'll come across something I'm glad I never threw away -- a fading photograph from my childhood, a drawing one of my kids did in preschool or a pair of sneakers I wore in a memorable race.
All at once my enthusiasm fades and I put down the trash can. How can I possibly get rid myself of all these possessions when my possessions, at least in some small way, define who I am?
And so the cycle repeats, over and over again. It's a struggle that reflects our national ambiguity over the accumulation of stuff.
We have TV shows that treat it as a pathology ("Hoarders") and TV shows that portray it as a wacky, potentially lucrative pastime ("Storage Wars," "Pawn Stars"). We have companies that specialize in emptying houses of castoff goods, and companies that come up with endless ways to store them.
We even have dueling visions about how things fit into the good life -- do they impede it or enable it?
On the one hand, minimalism is ascendant, with books, articles and websites preaching the virtue of ridding yourself of all but the most basic belongings.
"We hold onto these things because we think they're going to be useful in some hypothetical future that doesn't actually exist," Joshua Fields Millburn, part of the blogging duo known as "The Minimalists," told Time last year. "We hold onto almost everything just in case we might need it someday. I learned that the memories aren't in things, either. That's why I was holding onto so many things, because I thought the memories were in those things, but they weren't."
But speaking for the opposition, Iris Apfel, the 93-year-old fashion icon who is the subject of an eponymous documentary opening this week, says that's nonsense. She lives in a Park Avenue apartment crammed with furniture, books, clothes, paintings, objets d'art and bric-a-brac of every description. She regrets nothing.
"I love clutter," she said in a recent New York Times interview. "I think being totally minimal shows a lack of history and soul, and I find it sort of pitiful. I think it's wonderful to have stuff and live with memories and things you enjoy."
My heart is with the minimalists, yet I know I can't live that way. Everybody in a household must be equally committed and nobody can ever let down his guard. All it takes is one new hobby or renovation project, one moment of hesitation while holding an old college essay over the trash bin, to throw everything back into chaos.
So the best I can do is stagger along, carrying out the occasional purge but knowing I won't be clutter-free for long. The tide of stuff is too immense, too relentless. Still, I take some grim satisfaction in knowing that one day I will get my minimalist home, a place so tiny and barren that there will be just enough room for me and a single outfit.
Sure, it will be a coffin. But just try to vex me there, junk mail.
jkeilman@tribpub.com
