Leaving our nest of 15 years and shifting to an apartment better suited to our life today, filled me with overwhelming emotion — both happiness and sadness. Happy because we are going to a better abode and sad because I had to bid farewell to my old house, within the walls of which I had made beautiful memories with my family.
Part of me also cried thinking about the dreaded job I had to do over the next few days of packing everything. Yes, stuffing one’s belongings into bags and boxes is tough. It’s stressful, saps energy. By the time you are done with the whole process of packing and then unpacking, there’s not much enthusiasm left to furnish the new house.
Anyway, what has to be done has to be done. To avoid anxiety at the last moment, I decided to start sorting and packing a month before the move. It is said that how we style our home reflects our personality. But I believe that the adage holds good as long as we talk about outward appearances. In my own case my persona is concealed deep inside my closets, to be revealed only when its doors are opened.
Going through my precious belongings — room by room, cupboard by cupboard, attic by attic, and drawer by drawer — made me realise what a great hoarder I am. I never had the time to keep my wardrobe clutter-free. Or, to tell the truth, I never mustered the courage to dispose of all the bric-a–brac kept in my closets: from kids’ projects and empty boxes and clothes to old appliances. Some have a sentimental value attached to them. In the case of others, it’s difficult to bid farewell for fear that they would be needed the very day I dispose of them.
The written word is another category that I love to hoard. In this age of the Internet, where information is just a click away, I still have folders in which newspaper and magazine clippings are tucked into, with the noble intention of coming back to them during my free time. Well, I can’t help but preserve them as I find some articles funny, some informative and others written too beautifully to be thrown away mercilessly. It’s another story that the “free time” never comes in my life. And to avoid the guilt I keep saving these snippets of information.
In the Indian psyche?I don’t know from where I have learnt to accumulate things but I believe the urge to hoard things runs deep in the Indian psyche. In my growing up years I have seen it as a common practice in many households to save the clothes, toys and books of the elder child to hand it down to the younger ones — much to the dismay of the younger ones. But it kept the parents happy.
One of my aunts still saves the takeaway plastic food containers to reuse them later. Although her kids keep buying stylish glass containers, she has some fixation with the plastic ones. “They charge us for these too, so might as well use them,” she rests her case. But my aunt’s craze is nothing compared to the obsession of the average Indian household which, according to compiled data, have piled up as much as 20,000 tonnes of gold worth $1.16 trillion. That, in fact is some serious hoarding!
During the days before our “great move”, our neighbours, an elderly couple, visited us to say goodbyes. Seeing my packed boxes bulging at the seams, it didn’t take the man long to guess that half of them must be filled with junk. He couldn’t help but give me some pearls of wisdom. “If it hadn’t seen the light of the day for a year, there’s no use in hoarding the stuff in home,” he advised. Despite his wife’s protests, he either dumps those articles he deems useless, or donates them if they are in fairly good condition. Embracing a minimalist lifestyle is his mantra, by which he lives now.
It is with a heavy heart that you pare down worldly possessions, still I made a start when I gave away my “hoarded” belongings to my maid, and my kid’s old but almost new clothes to an orphanage. When I let go of them, it did feel good. I slowly started to discard unnecessary goods. Today I can proudly say our new home is in a state of order.
milansinghal@yahoo.co.in
