Walk-in Closet

5. January 2012 by Gennyfer.

People used to have tiny closets to hold their clothing. Washing machines and industrial manufacturing of clothing came along and we grew to need more space for our clothes. Television arrived and we could no longer just see what our neighbors had, but, we could see how people lived in far flung places. Television set design became more elaborate. Compare an old sitcom like “I Love Lucy” to sets of modern shows seen here. Then DIY shows showed us how to make our own spaces look like what we see on TV. Our brains get cluttered with all these images and we start to want what we see and finally expect what we see.

We started buying. New clothes every season. Shoes by the bagful. New, perfectly placed but, unmeaningful and uncherished decorations. We’ve ended up building so many houses with walk-in closets and huge garages, big enough to hold all of our stuff and we fill them anyway. Then we go out and by books on simplifying, organizing, decluttering. We hire organizers. We watch shows like Hoarder and secretly fear that we are only a few steps away from that kind of crazy. But, we still keep on buying.

When we die, we leave our loved ones with the horrible process of figuring out what to do with all the things we couldn’t let go. They pick up each piece and wonder if it was special, if they should keep it for their children. If it will somehow bring back what they really want… our love… our presence… more of what they didn’t have because we were so busy accumulating, cleaning, decluttering our stuff… our attention.

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