Less is More, More or Less...

Coming back from France I knew that there would things from my Canadian life that I would look at with new eyes.  I expected to miss the easy access to fresh foods, the intimacy that life in a less-populated area brings, even the privacy that being a family speaking a separate language can bring.  But the actual things that strike my fancy surprise me. 

One always reads about the North American culture of excess.  The bazillion food choices on the shelves, the three-car garage for a three-person family.  But I always felt removed and far away from that. Consider myself standing corrected. 

I did an enormous purge of our home before we left for France.  We made many trips to drop off donations of all sorts of items, put a number of things out for curbside treasuring, and even recycled and tossed out a number of toys and items that had made it long past their expiration dates.  I knew that we would still have some sorting and reprioritizing to do, but boy, I stunned even myself. 

As I unpacked a box labeled pantry items, I pulled out eight separate boxes of Ziploc bags.  I mean, how much storage can one family handle in the span of a week?  A month?  A year?  Luckily I also found my stash of Mason Jars.  Along with several boxes of used glass jars that I had saved for… hmmmm.  Yes, I have been labeled a pack rat before. 

I have to admit to a healthy dose of fear in attacking the boxes of children’s clothes that I left behind for my family.  There are numerous boxes for each age and size, and after a year of living with five outfits, I can’t even fathom what to do with all of the what-must-be extra clothes in those boxes.  At least I can pride myself on a year of good mending, and that I already know where my sewing kit is!  Extra clothes…  scary.

And then there is our toaster oven.  In France we were left a toaster (pop-up type) in the kitchen, but two out of three times that we used it over a period of many attempts it blew a fuse.  We eventually switched to having less toast and to actually having pain grillé. So now, upon our return to Toronto, I rediscover our toaster oven, capable of toasting nuts, melting quesadillas and yes, even making toast.  But, it turns out that only the bottom grill coils actually work.  Dilemma: make it work as is?  Switch to the skillet method again?  Buy a new one?  The jury is still out. 

Skads of overused Tupperware, junky toys that the kids refused to give up on.  Books upon books upon books.  It is so hard to know when to start over, what to pull out of circulation, what to donate to a new home.  The only easy and obvious things are the true trash: the baby toy that only works if you hold it just so, the board books that are now ripped in three, the shredded wooden spoons. 

The one piece that surprises me is how easy it is to use someone else’s food remains. Our tenants were not quite as thorough as I was at using up ingredients to the last drop.  Why I spent so much time and energy trying to use flour, peas and walnuts in a single dish I cannot tell you, but we left very little after our year abroad for the next tenants. However, I am now the recipient of about five different types of lentils, none of which I recognize either by sight or by name.  There are a number of Indian spices as well, on which my neighbour will give me a primer in the coming week.  And then a bunch of basic baking ingredients which, if you know me at all, you know are just about gone already.  I consider myself very lucky… you can envision the victory dance in my kitchen, arms rolling… But on day one in Canada, I was pretty sure that I would be tossing out most of it.  Let’s just say that a few five o’clock looks into the fridge made me running for the lentils, the various grains, and my empty spice cabinet led me to the unnamed mystery curry powders!

I am sure that my perspective on all of our STUFF will change even more over the coming weeks and months, but I hope that I can persist in this spirit of paring down, for no other reason than I can’t imagine where we ever fit all of this stuff in a usable way.  Actually, I think the key lies right there… we could not easily access much of what we had before.  Too much other junk in the way to get to what was really fun and rewarding.  Does that sound like a lesson for life or what?!