One of my favorite movies (and books) is The English Patient. I love the book for its prose—Michael Ondaatje has a way with the English language that makes me want to weep for its beauty (and also make one despair if one is an aspiring writer…) The movie dovetails neatly with the book, and is one of the better screen translations I’ve seen, giving visual flight to Ondaatje’s poetic turns of phrase. (The movie also helps to give bones to Ondaatje’s work, as he is fond of pronouns in place of proper names, and one can sometimes get lost in the various storylines going on as a result). I have dozens of quotes from this book in my quote book, but my favorite is this passage:
“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.
I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.”
This passage seems (at least to me) to capture the essence of a simple life, without the dead weight of accumulated physicality. In other words, we take ourselves through our lives, but not our stuff. One of the things I love most about the main character, Count Lazlo d’Almasy, is that he fits the essential contents of his life into a knapsack. At the end, his life’s possessions boil down to a volume of Herodotus. How lovely to be so unencumbered. On the day I moved to Moscow, when my entire life’s possessions fit into two suitcases and a carry on, I felt very light and free. I now spend a lot of time and energy trying to recapture that lightness by regular purges of stuff, toy culls, clothing sorts, and the like, but it never seems like enough. There is always more creeping in the door, and I admit to being as susceptible to clever adverts as the next person. Sometimes consumer goods really do make my life easier, but I’m finding that most of the time, it just adds to the physical and mental clutter of my home. I long for more simplicity in my life, and I keep trying to figure out the best way to achieve that in terms of the “stuff” we have in our lives.
For those of you that follow my other
blog, you might think this post a little ridiculous, as my other blog is about my stamping business (with bits of general life thrown in for good measure), and my business is somewhat acquisitive by nature. Acquisition, and the conflicting desires of it, are the aspect of my business that I struggle with the most—how much to buy, making sure I’m using what I’m buying (and not simply acquiring for its own sake, which is tempting, given the regularity with which new products are introduced by my company). I also admit to developing a bit of a fashion sense in the last year or so, and have overindulged my fashion budget a bit this year, particularly during this stressful immediate post partum period where I’m stuck in a chair nursing a baby for hours and hours a day with a mouse in my hand while the older children are fighting, or screaming, or both. You might even think I’ve lost my sanity, as I divulge some of the weird compulsions in my head. That’s okay. It’s my weird place, and I’m fine with that.
I had this idea a few years back that I would only own one pair of shoes. I decided my thrifted
Danskos were going to be the pair. I started looking at the rest of my shoes and was horrified to realize that I fit the average American woman’s shoe quota of nine pairs. I have this weird scenario that plays in my head where I’m living in extremis somewhere (usually during a war) and have to make do with one pair of shoes, preferably a pair that can withstand a lot of hardship. In this alternate mental reality, those extra eight pairs of shoes seem quite extravagant and silly. One of the odd by products of being a historian and keeping it all alive in my mind, I suppose. Then I remind myself that I’m not living in a war zone, or having to walk back home from Siberia or some such, so it is all right to have more than one pair. I’ve (mostly) given up on the one pair of shoes thing. I have about 10 pairs right now, but I wear them all at various times of the year, and am trying to relax about the whole thing.
I fight regularly with the contents of my closet, and being in my childbearing years is particularly frustrating in this way. I store a whole separate wardrobe of maternity clothes (under the bed) that makes me feel mentally that I have twice the clothes I really do. I constantly feel the urge to purge in my closet, but usually end up pruning too much, and then need a few things to keep my wardrobe functional. It is a mental battle between feeling like I should just own two black dresses (nursing friendly, of course!) and accessorize, and feeling like I want variety in my closet.
About six months after my husband and I got married (and had moved cross country twice in that period of time), I decided to do battle with my closet. I made a list of all the pieces of clothing that I owned, categorized by type. Then on a separate page, I made a list of all the categories, and decided how many items should be in each category. Then I had to make some decisions. If I was allowing myself 3 daily dresses, 3 sweaters, 4 long sleeve and 4 short sleeve shirts, 3 skirts, 2 sets of pajamas, and a few dressy dresses (I don’t remember the exact numbers right now, but that is pretty close), I needed to clear out some items that I wore regularly but not all the time. I tried to steer toward items that could be worn year round with a few adjustments and to clear out stuff that didn’t fit or look right on me. At the end of that purge, I felt pretty good about the contents of my closet. But that was before I started having babies and having weight shifts of 30-50 pounds every year or so for the last four+ years. I’ve given up the dream of having x-number of any particular item, but rather having a composite of items I really love. I do need to examine my sock drawer. And the nursing shirts that I wear even though they make me feel frumpy. Lately, I’m trying to make note of an outfit that I love when I wear it so that I will end up with a mental rolodex of great outfits and not feel like my closet has too much or too little. What makes me feel like I’m overflowing with clothes is that our clothing storage is pretty ridiculous. I remind myself that my entire daily wardrobe fits into an absurdly small closet (the closet has room for about 14 hangers, tops), plus three drawers. I’m trying to make peace with it.
The thing I keep reminding myself is that simplification does not mean having no stuff. It does mean shifting the chaff, and distinguishing the two can be difficult for me given my whole d’Almasy knapsack ideal. I’ve also come to the great conclusion that it is better to spend a bit more on one quality thing than to spend small amounts of lots of cheaply made things. I don’t know why it took me so long to come to this conclusion. I think it was when I realized that I’m dressing my daughter in the same 3 or 4
well made dresses from
Land’s End and LLBean most of the time. I’m still trying to come up with a master wardrobe list for everyone in the family, but it is a work in progress. Basically, the master list is the amount of clothing a person needs for a laundry cycle (which currently maxes out at about 5 days more for machine capacity reasons rather than ran-out-of-underwear reasons). The boys’ wardrobe looks like this (more or less):
2-3 pairs jeans
2-3 pairs pants (that can be worn to church or any time)
4-5 long sleeve t shirts
2-3 sweaters
1 sweatshirt
2 long sleeve button downs for church
1 sweater vest
(4 long sleeve onesies for M as undershirts in winter)
2 pairs tights for long underwear in winter
2 pairs leggings for long underwear in winter
5-6 pairs socks
7-10 pairs underwear (for H)
2-3 winter pjs
2-3 summer pjs
4-5 short sleeve tshirts
4-5 pairs shorts
Daily shoe (fall/spring shoe)
Crocs (summer shoe)
Rain boot (winter shoe)
I’m still working out Birdie’s master wardrobe, but it is mostly dresses and tights and onesies for under the dresses right now. I just need to figure out how many of each she really needs to get through a laundry cycle.
So while I think I have to let go of my knapsack dreams and get on with the reality of living in a household with three small children, I will continue to strive for simplicity in our wardrobes. I’m going to resolve, once again, to be more careful about our clothing purchases, and reconsider everything that comes through the door. I need to remind myself that less is more, and quality trumps quantity. I need to remember that simplicity starts in the mind. I will choose to consume less, and be content with what I have. I’m sure I will fail, and that I will need to revisit my wardrobe as well as the contents of my household on a regular basis. I will have to make this choice again and again, but simple isn’t always easy. But it is always worth it.
