The Purge

Another thing about stuff is that, the more often you move, the less stuff you will have. That's because, every time you move, you leave some stuff for the next occupant and you throw some stuff away. Conversely, the longer you live in a place, the more stuff you accumulate. People tend to move more often when they're young, but it seems to get harder and harder each time until they reach a certain age when they say, "This is the last move!" From that point on, stuff accumulates until you die and it becomes somebody else's problem.

My daughter has always been a Gypsy at heart, she considers her life to be one long camping trip. Every time she breaks camp and relocates, anything that doesn't fit in her car gets left behind. Well, not so much anymore, but that's the way she lived until about the time she turned 40. Since then, she has been known to stay in a place for several years at a time, but she still spends a lot of time on the road, and she still believes in traveling light. Every once in a while, even when she's not moving, she goes through all her stuff and gives or throws a lot of it away. She calls it "having a purge". She has offered to come over and show us how it's done, but neither my hypothetical wife nor I are willing to disrupt our lives like that. We prefer to limit our intake of new stuff but, once it's here, it's here forever. Someday, when we're dead and gone, Jenny can have the purge of a lifetime, but not now.

Our stuff might appear disorganized to the casual observer, but we know where everything is. The inside of the house is my hypothetical wife's domain, while the garage, the barn, and the grounds are mine. If I want to find something in the house, I know better than to go rummaging around looking for it myself. One nice thing about being married for a long time is that you know your place which, in the long run, is for the best.