Order and Nostalgia

“Abandon all nostalgia” heads part of an article in last Sunday Times. It’s about Barbara Reich (rhymes with quiche), a professional organizer. She’s booked three weeks in advance and when she comes to you she’ll charge you $150 an hour to make you throw stuff away. Among the items that she browbeats her clients into tossing are samples of their children’s earliest writing (“Everybody’s going to learn to read and write. You don’t need the evidence.”), baby toys kept in case someone with an infant comes to visit (“You’re not running a day-care center.”), and a checkers set with only black pieces, a gift from a relative (“She won’t love you any less.”) In the words of one of her enthusiastic clients, “if you’re nostalgic in any way, you’re probably in trouble with Barbara.”

Nostalgia and clutter have been on my mind these days because in about a month we’re scheduled to empty our apartment in order to renovate it. In the process of preparing our household goods to be put into storage, we’re confronted with items that should be thrown away. Why am I keeping that old-fashioned cell phone that I used in Jerusalem? Why am I filing bank and credit card statements when these are available on line for the past seven years?

We went through a more serious process of deaccessioning when we sold our apartment in Jerusalem, where we had accumulated stuff for 32 years. I think I persuaded my wife to throw away our children's primary school drawings, and I forced myself to give away lots of clothes that I hadn't worn for years. But I kept many items of purely sentimental value, for it was hard to say goodbye to them. And now that it's time to winnow our belongings once again, I find myself with the same difficulty. If we could afford her services now, I probably would be in trouble with Barbara.

Right now I’m staring at a crude necklace of thin glass disks, cobalt blue, strung on many soft, thin cotton strands. A little tin bell hangs from it. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopian toddlers wear them, or at least they did when we lived there more than 40 years ago. When a child moved, the bell tinkled, so perhaps it helped parents keep track of children. Perhaps the blue color kept away the evil eye. Whatever the origin of these necklaces, we thought them exotic, so we bought one in the Merkato, the city’s great outdoor market. When we moved into our Jerusalem apartment, I hung it on the doorknob of my study, where it remained for 32 years. Now it hangs on the doorknob of my study here. But it’s neither beautiful nor valuable. It’s just one more component of our apartment’s clutter. Shouldn’t I throw it away at last?

“How can you do that?” asked my wife, when I proposed disposing of the necklace. “Every time you look at it you remember Ethiopia.” That’s true, but I have other means of remembrance – photographs and paintings, a piece of pottery that has miraculously survived, a book with my name on it. “What's a home?” she continued. “Isn’t it a place of sentiment, of memory? Do you want our home to look like a nondescript hotel room?”

I really didn’t need much persuasion. After all, the blue necklace takes up little space, even on the doorknob’s neck. And Ethiopia is not the only place and time it evokes. It also reminds me of our life in Jerusalem, where it was a mute witness to the work of more than 30 years. And now it watches over me as I write this post. My wife is right. Order and lack of clutter are important, but so is sentiment. The trick is to find a happy medium between the two.