The Slow Throw

“What man . . . would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart . . . exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men? I could never tell from inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are.”
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

A few years ago, my daughter Friday had me read the book Untamed by Glennon Doyle. After reading it, my reaction was “meh”—for the most part it was just warmed-over Transcendentalism—but Friday loved it. She was so influenced by it that one morning, after a dark night of the soul listening to teen-agers party on her lawn all night, she decided she “needed to live her truest, most beautiful life which involved not being around people.” So, she had sold her home, bought a new one in the mountains, packed up all her stuff, and moved out of the city—all in less than four weeks. Of course, much of that involved me; everything Friday does eventually involves me. During the move I asked, “Tell me again: why we’re doing this?” Her response was, “Houses in the city imprison us rather than house us. Now get back to work.” I don’t think she knew she was paraphrasing Thoreau; I think she thought she was quoting Fight Club.

More recently, Friday decided that she no longer wanted to own a house. What she wanted was to be “a sojourner in nature,” to dwell “as it were, in a tent in this world . . . either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain tops.”  Because she owned a house she said, “I no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.”  Maybe she didn’t quote Thoreau quite so exactly, but that was the gist of her motivation. And again, with startling alacrity, she bought a mobile home and started getting rid of anything she wouldn’t need as a full-time runaway.

This time, however, it wasn’t a matter of simply moving her possessions. Rather, she needed to get rid of them, and she protested that it was a slow and difficult process to decide what to do with all her stuff. And again, as everything Friday does eventually involves me, her solution to this difficult decision making was to pack a lot of stuff in boxes and put them in in my garage.  Consequently, this morning, when I found myself frustrated that there wasn’t room for me to park my car in the garage, I asked Maelstrom if I could take the boxes down to the basement. She said no and added that everything would be coming into the house. When I protested that we didn’t have enough room for everything to be incorporated into the house, Maelstrom looked at me and said, “Oh, we’ll have room . . . after I get rid of everything that’s old and useless.”

To be clear, by “old and useless” she meant me. Also to be clear, “getting rid of everything” is an impossibly slow process that I call the “slow throw.” Here’s how it works.

1. Maelstrom identifies the objects that we’re going to get rid of, stuff that hasn’t been used in 10 years and isn’t needed and hasn’t been thought about since it got put into a drawer or a closet or the storeroom.

2. She then designates each of these items as being “something the kids may want,” and she stages these in Junk Pile Alpha.

3. Then we wait for her to talk to the kids. Unfortunately, the communication semantics of Junk Pile Alpha are asynchronous, and they are not guaranteed to complete. Junk Pile Alpha may sit in stasis for months.

4. After about six months, I lovingly and gently remind Maelstrom that she was going to ask the kids if they wanted the things in Junk Pile Alpha. She refers to this stage as me pitching a fit. Afterwards another month passes while we’re not speaking to each other and she’s actually asking to the kids if they want anything.

5. After she has heard back from all the kids, she then divides Junk Pike Alpha into Junk Pile Bravo and Junk Pile Charlie. Junk Pile Bravo contains the objects that kids say they want. (The semantics Junk Pile Bravo are synchronous, but delivery is not guaranteed.)  Junk Pile Charlie, which is always the smallest pile, consists of objects that Maelstrom says she’ll take to Goodwill.

6. After about 30 days of waiting, I pitch a fit about Junk Pile Charlie, and she lovingly and gently says “Take it to Goodwill yourself!” And so I take Junk Pile Charlie to Goodwill.

7. Then we watch Junk Pile Bravo sit in stasis for months. At some point one of the kids may stop by for a visit and take something off the pile. At other times, we may put part of the pile into the Suburban and deliver it to one of the kids.

8. Finally, after an indeterminate period of time, all the things in Junk Pile Bravo that have not been picked up or delivered to the kids are moved into the storeroom.

The problem with the slow throw is that so much time passes between the initial exhilaration of deciding to get rid of something and its eventual departure, that it is very unsatisfying. It seems more like moving stuff around than getting rid of stuff. I suppose that just validates Thoreau’s observation that things are “more easily acquired than got rid of.” The best I can hope for, it seems, is to have the flow of stuff going out of the house somehow exceed the flow of things coming in. Or perhaps I can hope that when her runaway adventure ends, Friday returns to take a bunch of stuff out of drawers and closets and the storeroom. And as everything Friday does eventually involves me, that is probably my best bet.