After a harrowing battle with a financial institution, not quite helped by debt counselling, I decided to sell my house. Having to tell my son we were moving was not any less agonising. This was, after all, the house in which we’d been living since my divorce from his father.
The house where he had his most memorable birthday parties (Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted House), where he and his friends spent countless hours on the jungle gym, and he and his brother and sister (read: the children of my domestic helper) held rip-roaring concerts covering the spectrum from We Will Rock You to Que Sera Sera.
His reaction to the news was immediate, and heart-wrenching. “Mommy,” he said, “we can’t let this baby go. She’s got too many memories”.
And so she did, but still we had to go. Taking the memories with us, but mercifully, not all the clutter. In my case, I could also tag along a gently paradigm-shifting quote from a book by Sheldon Kopp: “A man who is truly joyful is like a man whose house has burnt down. Over every stone that is laid, his heart rejoices.”
Because ultimately, giving up the house was only the tip of the “burning down” pyre. Systemically, sometimes painfully, I’d been making short shrift of the heavy burden of my earthly possessions.
A month or two before the Great Trek, I started throwing things out with a vengeance. Bagfuls for the Pikitup guys, car boots full for the charity shops, armfuls for friends. And that was before I got to the furniture. From giving away for free and holding a driveway sale to selling via auction, I was letting go, letting go, letting go.
Or so I thought. There was still way too much. The study table which made four strong men sweat, the bookshelf that would have made Mr Universe’s eyeballs bulge. Even the statue of a mermaid and a man which formed the centre of my interior decorating universe for the past 20 years. My son had broken the mermaid’s tail fin, and the movers, the guy’s leg.
All of this and more filled the removal truck. Half of it I wouldn’t even have missed, had the truck been hijacked on the way to the storage facility.
But it gets even more scary. Each of these things was, for one brief shining moment, something I’d seen and desired, and “just couldn’t live without”.
Yet now these earthly possessions, the tyranny of the clutter in my life, filled me with a weary but rejuvenating realisation. One has to look before leaping from the frying pan of desire, into the fire of conspicuous consumerism.
I realise now that there are rarely grand plans behind these purchases. But with a little bit of vision, one can avoid a lot of red tape, headaches and heartsores.
So these days I think really well before I take out the hard cash or dull old debit card for the sexy shoes, the antique side table, or even the herbs and spices that I’d probably end up using once before consigning them to the rubbish bin or charity shop.
Bittersweet experience has taught me to ask one key question before unlocking my debit card or wallet. “Is it going to truly add something to my life, or is it going to become just another albatross round my neck?”
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