Mother's column – filling cupboards by treasure hunting
I do try to make sustainable choices, but if I have to go to the drug store for a jar of gel and a comb, I still can't resist walking past the discount shelves, and sometimes I just come home with a full bag. Photo AFP, Federico Parra
Christian Life
It's just a small news item in the paper: Marie Kondo, the Japanese bestselling author who taught the whole world to declutter, has now given up on the ideal of a tidy home herself. The reason: she now has three children. I smile upon reading it, and actually I feel a little comforted. If even she fails at it, it would be a miracle if I would nail it.
Still, it would also be a shame to throw the whole idea of decluttering into the bin. It is to everyone's benefit if we learn to settle for less. After all, our insatiable hunger for stuff causes huge piles of waste elsewhere in the world.
And we ourselves lose something valuable with our abundant lives, too. Take the old shoebox with letters and photos from the past - they were cherished and preserved with great care for posterity. Now we find ourselves with hundreds of photos a month and thousands of messages on our phones. We store piles and piles of information, but in the meantime, we lose sight of what is really precious.
Of course, we know the old Dutch saying is true: “niet het vele is goed, maar het goede is veel” (not the plentiful is good, but the good is plentiful). But it is not so easy to really live by that principle. Especially if one, like me, comes from a lineage of hunter-gatherers (bargain hunters and stuff gatherers, to be precise). Those genes are hard to deny. I do try to make sustainable choices, but if I have to go to the drug store for a jar of gel and a comb, I still can't resist walking past the discount shelves, and sometimes I just come home with a full bag.
So learning to declutter is still a work in progress for me. And as Marie Kondo discovered: once you have children, it doesn't get any easier. A while back, for instance, Martha came home with three different saucers, two porridge dishes, a couple of spoons and a dinner plate. "They were going to remodel the kitchen at school, and there was a note of free takeaway," she explained. "And did other children take things too?" I asked. "They didn't. I guess they didn't really know what to do with it, or they already had enough at home." Right.
Meanwhile, Martha's treasures have found a place in our kitchen cupboards. It just barely fitted.
About the author
Neline is married and the mother of five: Martha (9), Abel (7), Jolijn (5), Reinout (3) and Sifra (1).
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