By Jim Hagarty
1988
I once knew and admired a man who purposely owned almost nothing. No car. No house. No furniture. No TV set. No expensive clothes.
Among his few worldly possessions, I’m guessing, were a set of golf clubs and a dog. And inasmuch as no living being can ever really claim to own another, not even the dog was his. In fact, he named the animal Free.
Some people don’t have much and wish they had more. Some have a lot and want a lot more. But he had nothing and somehow, that seemed to be more than enough for him. Not only did he not have to think about making payments on credit cards, mortgages and car loans, he was also spared the worry of having someone steal his stuff. And he never had to undergo the agony of throwing away the things he had no need of any more. Because most people have a lot less trouble getting things than they do getting rid of them.
It’s a difficult problem. Of all the possessions the average person collects up over the years, what should be kept and what thrown away? Many people form a sentimental attachment to half the things they own and are afraid they’ll need the other half on some far off someday.
Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to this dilemma but there are guidelines that may be of use. Here they are.
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Never throw out a button. Though the shirt on which it belonged hasn’t been on your body for 20 years or on anyone else’s, keep the button. Even if you don’t know how to sew a button onto anything, keep the button. Keep every button that ever fell off any piece of clothing you ever owned. Put them all in a plastic bag, seal the bag with a twist tie and then hide bag and buttons in the bottom of a desk drawer so you won’t think of them again until next time you decide to throw things out. At that time, open the bag and toss in any new buttons you’ve found since the last time. Reseal carefully and store away again.
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Keep all things official. Especially typewritten things which, by their nature, are more important than handwritten things. Especially hang onto everything you ever got from a government because you know the day after you throw it out, the government will come and put you in jail because you don’t have it any more.
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Never pitch old watches or pairs of eyeglasses, even though the watches don’t tick any more and the spectacles are two weak for your eyes. Once a year, hold the watches to your ear and when you hear them not ticking, put them back in the drawer. Maybe next year they’ll start working again. Try on your old glasses, remember what a nerd you were, and then put them back too. Your eyes may suddenly improve a lot and the weaker lens would be perfect again.
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Old keys should never be thrown away. Every year, take them out, try them in every lock in the house and when they don’t fit any of them, put them back in the drawer. (They are for a house in another town that someone else now owns, for a car that’s sitting rusting in a junkyard and for an office where you worked years ago and where you’ll never work again.)
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Never pitch a picture. Even if it’s out of focus and you don’t know who’s in it. Nothing beats a boxful of fuzzy photos of no-name people taken in unknown places to keep future generations guessing. Mostly what they’ll be guessing is, “Why do you suppose he kept these pictures?”
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Never give away a gift. Though you never liked it, never used it, never will use it and can’t even remember who gave it to you, it’s wrong to get rid of something somebody dashed into a department store and bought for you at the last minute 15 birthdays ago.
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Never throw out a Reader’s Digest.
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Above all, keep all things electronic. This includes radios, cameras and anything else that produces a light or a noise.
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Though the above steps seem to suggest you should keep almost everything, this is not true. You can go ahead and throw out any $25 thing that big city people will pay $500 for someday as well as anything you’ll suddenly need the day after you throw it out.
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Happy housecleaning!
