On the recurring battle against stuff

Most of us have heard George Carlin's riff on stuff. In brief, we spend a lot of our energy on our stuff, carrying it with us, finding places to keep, wondering where our stuff is.

Having cleaned out my father's house in the past year, we've come to appreciate how important it is to keep important stuff and how difficult it is to get rid of the stuff that isn't important. Thoreau wrote of the good men of Concord, pushing their barns in front of them:

How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables (8) never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot!

So, while some folks try to show us how to hang your books from the rafters, we're trying to find ways to trim the amount of stuff that wanders into the house and stays, thanks to Newton's first law. We've cleaned off one bookshelf in our study, sending a couple of boxes of books to the town library's used book sale and planning to sell a few on Amazon. I've decided that I can get by with six portable radios (three of them short-wave) and so will donate the extras to next summer's Phillipston flea market.

Thoreau also wrote of the Mucclasse Indians who, when the new harvest comes and when they have acquired new pots, pans, clothes, and furniture, would burn their old stuff, cleansing and simplifying.

Update: "Selfish capitalism is bad for your mental health."