Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
Ode to Eve
Recently I’ve been reading Mess: One Man’s Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act by Barry Yourgrau. It is a good read, and his struggle with clutter rings true to me. One of Yourgrau’s many procrastination techniques is to delve into the origins of his inability to let go. While in my experience this is an inefficient way to get rid of clutter, it makes for some fascinating reading.
It also got me thinking about my childhood memories, the ones that shaped me. And that led me to thinking about Eve. Eve (not her real name) was a good friend of my parents before I was born. Like many of my parent’s friends, she was single and childless. While they all bought me too much, in my mother’s opinion, Eve was in a class by herself. She loved to shop, and I was frequently the recipient of her largess.
I loved Eve, not only because she bought me things, but also because she was sparkly. Originally from the south, she had come to New York and worked her way up to being the secretary of the CEO of a major corporation. Later she followed him to the White House, where he served in Nixon’s cabinet. While my mother was practical in beige, Eve spent her considerable disposable income on looking fabulous. Her hair was blonde and done, her dresses colorful and shimmering and her jewelry was wonderful. I’d sit on her lap and take her earrings off of her and put them on me, and she let me. I adored her.
When she moved to D.C., we saw less of her. When I was six we went to Washington and I was in her apartment for the first time.
It was a shock. I was confused: Did she live in an antique store? Everything was so interesting. I remember a ceramic elephant table blocking the hallway and an umbrella stand with a number of canes and an umbrella like the one in Mary Poppins. There was so much stuff. But where was the couch, the bed, the kitchen? She had bought herself into a corner. Even my messy, six-year-old self could see it was a problem. I asked my mother if she had just moved.
It was hard for my young brain to resolve these two incompatible images. I was a shallow child: Eve’s outward appearance—her matching shoes and bags, her perfect coiffure and her feminine palette were a huge part of my attraction to her. How could someone who cared about beauty live in a place that looked like a storage unit for an eccentric antique dealer?
I think that day stayed etched in my brain. And that question is still interesting to me. So many of my clients look so fabulous, and yet…
Yourgrau traces his inability to throw things out to a few key events in his life, including frequent moves as a child and a broken water bottle. So let’s try his Freudian approach: What makes you unwilling to let go? Or what makes you want to overbuy? I was too young to ask Eve those questions at the time, but how I wish I could travel back in time, and while I was asking her those questions, I’d be helping her let go.