Sometimes I wonder if people buy homes simply for the sake of no longer having to move.
Yes, there are families who upgrade houses as their needs for space grow, and singles who merge into partnerships and buy a first home together, but I imagine that a majority of the people who can buy a home are one and done. For good reason.
Anyone — homeowner, renter or friend looking for pizza in exchange for labor — knows that moving from one domicile to another is an eye-opening exercise in patience, compromise and introspection.
Typically we don’t consider how much we acquire over time, especially in adulthood when we have moved into our own place. It is not until one moves and is forced to pack their belongings that we are forced to consider how many things, objects and pieces of junk we have accumulated.
I knew someone who once went skiing. She preceded her weekend on the slopes with a mini shopping spree. It was an excursion that left her with goggles, insulated gloves and an expensive but “cute” ski jacket that was too warm for the mild Southern California climate she called home. With the exception of that weekend I don’t think the outfit ever saw the light of day again, except for the times when she moved from apartment to apartment. As I said, my friend went skiing. Once.
In my closet at the top shelf is a sweatshirt that I’ve had for 20-plus years and numerous moves. Calling it a sweatshirt is a kindness. It has more holes than Congressman Duncan Hunter’s fraud alibis and is strung together more by hope and nostalgia than serviceable thread. Still, that garment will go where I go, though really the only times I lay hands on it are when I push it aside looking for other clothes that I might wear again if time travel for waist lines is invented.
I have stacks and shelves of books that are read, unread, worn, torn and have no chance of being cracked open. Yet I would have them follow me to the grave if I could.
My junk drawer is a landfill. In there are bits and pieces of cell phones and calculators and flashlights and pens and pencils and string and receipts and doodads and thingamabobs. They are all magic because they have managed to multiply and take over a second drawer.
I have stacks of plates that don’t match, forks too small to hold food, coffee mugs to fill 50 cafes and enough pots and pans to cook for an army camped out at the border on a ridiculous mission.
George Carlin once said our houses are just places to hold our stuff and if we didn’t have so much stuff we wouldn’t need a house. He’s probably right.
And yet, on the day after Thanksgiving we enter that time of the year where we are encouraged to buy more stuff for ourselves and each other. More stuff that in time will be left unused or forgotten. If only someone would buy us a second house we might have room for the stuff we already have and the needless stuff we’re about to receive.
