What better demonstration could there be of this blog’s wide-ranging eclecticism than the hairpin turn from Handel’s Messiah yesterday to garbage bags today? This mountain is the result of my energetic efforts to tidy up our basement, so the cable guy could go down there without fear of losing his lunch, his sanity, or both. Trust me when I say that our basement was to messes what Michael Phelps is to swimming – utterly unrivaled. And how did it get to be so? Plain and simple neglect. I’ve been dumping stuff there for the past seven years and forbidding my wife from going near it – and when Greg Berg is given free reign over any locale, a mess worthy of the Guiness Book of World Records is the inevitable result.
The day of reckoning came when we decided to give each other a new flat-screen TV for Christmas this year – and then came to the sobering realization that someone from Time Warner Cable, in order to create a new outlet for our new toy, would have to go down into our basement. Sobering? Try horrifying. Had it been a viable alternative, I think Kathy and I would have preferred to host our own cable access program in the nude rather than open our basement to a stranger- but that was not an option. (Is that a gigantic collective WHEW I hear?)
So I took on the rather monumental task of creating at least a little bit of order in the midst of that chaos – and also clearing the corner where the technician would need to work. . . . which just happened to be that corner of the basement which was piled high with several hundred books- although “piled” implies some semblance of order -when there was absolutely none at all, and in fact there weren’t really even discernible piles. It looked for all the world like a huge dump truck had just unceremoniously dumped a load of books there. So I did what needed to be done: I plopped myself in the middle of the mess, had a good cry, and then began the task of dividing that mountain of books into a Keep pile and a Discard pile. . . and all the while being bound and determined to be ruthless with my discards. And lo and behold, I managed to discard approximately three books for every one book I decided to keep! I still don’t know where that kind of ruthlessness came from- it’s never been there before and for all I know I might not ever feel it again. But over the last few days, some sort of light switch went off inside my head and it made it possible for me to let go of a lot of those books with scarcely a twinge of regret. Of course, we weren’t throwing these books away – we were donating them to the local chapter of AAUW. And one of these days, when I’m feeling sufficiently muscular, I will be hauling these FIFTEEN boxes of books to the used book store which they operate.
But of course there was a lot more than books down there and my Ruthlessness with Discards extended itself to all kinds of stuff we had absolutely no reason to keep – like 1000 business cards for Caritas that are completely obsolete. . . or old test papers from exams and quizzes I gave over ten years ago . . . or table cloths for our Dutch Extension dining room table, which we no longer even own. . . or back issues of People magazine . . . or a beat up and battered poster from the Louvre that is way too rough looking to ever hang on a wall . . . Some of this went into the garbage, although other stuff will be carted off to Goodwill Industries. All it took was time, a little bit of sweat, and a long absent sense of realism about how much stuff we need to keep. And it was amazing to me what a shot in the arm it was to be letting go of so much of what we had accumulated over the years. And when at last we could see the floor of the basement – and then vacuumed it – it started to feel like we had a fighting chance to actually make our basement into a space in which we could live and be happy and into which we might actually permit someone to enter. Ah, has Ruthlessness (for one’s discards) ever felt quite this good?
And of course, part of the fun of the clean up is the discovery of things we haven’t laid eyes on in many years – like our photos from dad and Sonja’s wedding – or a thank you note from someone at the radio station (someone I didn’t get along with particularly well, in fact) who appreciated the eulogy I gave for Everetta McQuestion’s funeral – or the letter I sent to then national bishop H. George Anderson (former president of Luther College), beseeching him to come preach at Holy Communion’s 100th anniversary celebration (He did!) – or my copy of the infamous Time magazine with O.J. Simpson’s mug shot on the cover. . . There’s a lot of our lives down in that basement, buried under the corpses of dead bugs and lots of dust – but it’s there.
Which reminds me – There is a Carthage grad who will remain nameless who is no longer welcome in our house. The reason is that this person, during a Carthage Christmas Festival party at our house, had the audacity to sneak down into our basement – with a voice student of mine in tow – and the two of them snuck into our basement. They were sneaky, too, because we never saw them go down – we only saw them when one of them was coming back upstairs again and trying to look nonchalant. But we knew where they had been and the thought of someone sneaking into our basement like that, presumably to check on the mess, without any permission at all, was one of those so-called Unforgivable Sins. And to this day, that student – now a graduate and actually an employee of Carthage – has not been invited back to our house. Yes, I know- 7X70 and “ye without sin cast the first stone” and all that . . . but this was an infraction we couldn’t quite forgive. Maybe someday when we have evolved to a higher state. But I guarantee you it won’t be any time soon.
Anyway, I’m quite sure that I have spent more time in our basement over the last three days than I did during all the eight years we have lived here. . . which is Reason #1 why we got into this predicament. But now that it looks more like a basement and less like a land fill, I think it will be a little more tempting to spend some time there – and that will be the key to really getting it clean and maintained. Not that I’m an expert. Mess-making is much more my specialty than Mess-maintenance, but I’m learning. It may be the hard way, but I’m learning.
pictured: the seven giant-sized Glad garbage bags piled up in our garage are full of stuff from the basement. And this is the throw-away pile. The Goodwill pile is at least this size. (They may have to purchase another warehouse just to handle what we’re bringing them!)