The Post-Christmas Purge

[An unabridged version of a short essay that ran Dec. 26]

In my house, Christmas is a secular holiday built around gifting, followed immediately on the 26th by another secular holiday built around regret.

Its the day everyone returns stuff to the store, particularly the presents that I, the Dad, bought at the last minute without fully considering whether anyone in my house would actually want, for Christmas, a wheelbarrow. But isnt that a practical gift? A wheelbarrow is particularly useful at Christmastime when one needs to convey a large quantity of heavy consumer items from the front door to the car in order to return them to the store.

This day of regret is a time for assiduous purging of anything that can be defined as stuff. Resolved: We have too much stuff. Thus, not only do unwanted, wrongly sized and/or hideously inappropriate gifts (who knew that rhinestone-studded knee-high leather boots werent fashionable this year?) depart the house, so do countless random objects in the house. This stuff is swept away as collateral damage from the general sense of revulsion and I dont think thats too strong a word over the consumerist, materialist madness has incited all of us to overgift one another at Christmas (because we fear someone might feel undergifted and inadequately loved).

How many objects now exist in a typical home? I am guessing that my house contains more than 150,000 distinct objects. Many of them are womens shoes. To my eye, many of these shoes do not appear to be useful for walking. The shapes of the shoes dont seem to match the shape of human feet! Its like, hey, this would be a nice shoe for a species of animal with narrow, tapering hooves.

A few years back, when the daughters were still interested in dolls, we probably had, on any given day, something like 20,000 shoes in the house, which may seem like a high number until you realize Im including the American Girl doll shoes, the Barbie shoes, the Kelly doll shoes, in addition to the shoes worn by the actual humans. Question: Do we really need parallel, non-overlapping, differently sized doll universes? As you know, a dolls shoe is inherently migratory, and is always lost until it is rediscovered when you step on it at 3 in the morning, hopping in pain as your unleash vile curses upon that effing Barbie.

When the girls age out of the doll phase, you have the dilemma of what to do with all that stuff. Sell it at a yard sale? Total strangers will come to your house and look at all your displayed clutter, which is an inherently undignified encounter both for seller and buyer, particularly when the buyer gets a grimace on his or her face that basically says, All this should be piled up and lit on fire.

Some people are great at getting rid of clutter. These are spiritual people who can survive for weeks on oxygen and distilled water alone. But for most of us, clutter not only survives our periodic purges, it continues to reign supreme, dominating the home. Ultimately you have no choice but to surrender. There are entire corners of the basement, attic or garage that are no-go zones.

On the day of regret you may find yourself penetrating one of these areas, fired with clutter hatred. You are subconsciously thinking you can absolve yourself of consumerist lunacy if you load up eightor 10 jumbo garbage bags with about 15,000 unnecessary objects. But the mission is never accomplished. Inevitably, youll discover a box of artwork made by the kids in elementary school. And old Christmas cards from friends you havent seen recently. And mementos of your youth and adventures long ago. Youll lose all momentum, stuck in your stuff marinating in the scrapheap of a modern life.

Joel Achenbach writes on science and politics for the Post's national desk and on the "Achenblog."

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The Post-Christmas Purge