On Minimalism and Socks

The last time I was pregnant I went through a violent nesting phase. This is not uncommon. But whereas most expectant mothers tend to hoard (food, diapers, blankets, etc), my “nesting” went in the opposite direction. I wanted to Get. Rid. Of. Everything.

This purging instinct was not always popular in my house. My husband and my toddler were prone to revolt, so that often I was forced to resort to subterfuge.

I started reading minimalist blogs when I should have been writing and making secret trips to Good Will when I was supposedly running to the grocery store. 

Much of this new minimalism was a reaction to a real and overwhelming glut of stuff in our home. 

You see, for the first five years of our marriage we didn’t have that much stuff. There were the books, of course. Okay, lots of books. But books aren’t “stuff” (right?). We moved to and from Scotland with two suitcases. (I shipped the books.) And when we bought our house I was overwhelmed with the vast and empty rooms, the cavernous basement. How, I wondered, would I ever fill up all this space? Ha. Ha. Just a few years later and I wonder at my own naiveté. During this time one of my grandmothers passed away and the other downsized. And then truckloads of furniture, books (more books!), linens, toys, and who knows what else descended upon us.

Don’t get me wrong. These are lovely things. Beautiful and meaningful things. But THINGS. Things that we must move, care for, clean, and (inevitably—we do have children after all) repair. Things are a burden!—who knew! Even getting RID of things is a huge task.

And this is just “grownup” things. The kids are a whole other universe of things.

I swear I don’t ever buy my kids toys, yet I pick up roughly one thousand small, brightly colored objects from the floor every day. And the socks. The sheer number of tiny mismatched socks is enough to give me a panic attack *right* *now.*

And if all of this is making my palms sweat now, just imagine how I felt when I was 9 months pregnant and roughly the size of a beached whale. I was tired of digging play-mobile people and single socks (socks!!) out from underneath the couch.

In addition to this not unreasonable pregnant frustration, I was also, in my new minimalism, keenly aware of the rampant consumerism and materialism that pervades our culture. I recognized that so often I was complicit, saw that my little daughter, when confronted with shining packages of Disney princesses, looked, hesitated not a moment--and was undone. Things, I thought, are an addiction, a drug. And I didn’t want that for myself or my family.  I wanted my home to be a place for people and not things. I wanted the things in my home to be either beautiful, useful—or both. Things that reflected and strengthened relationships, rather than crowding them out.

These were the better motives for my new minimalism.

But there were other motives, less noble.

Some nights I found myself frantically searching online for images of minimalist homes: homes with no toys, homes with hardly anything in sight. “There are no toys on the floor,” I said to myself gazing on in awe and (dare I say it?) something like lust. And then suddenly the observation changed. “There are no toys” became “there are no children.”

And this was the dangerous part. Because part of my minimalism was more than a mere rejection of “stuff” and the burden of “stuff,” it was, in its worst moments, a rejection of the people and relationships associated with the stuff. Because people are burdens. Relationships are messy.

Part of me wanted to get rid, not just of the things, but of the people attached to the things. “Why can’t you people just leave me alone?!” All I want is to be alone in a white room with nothing in it: no responsibilities, no emotions, no mess…and no socks.

I think it was the socks that finally got me to recognize the darker side of my “minimalism.” I was sorting socks. And there were a lot of socks. In a moment of frustration I declared to my husband (who happened to be passing) that I was going to throw away all of the socks. Then there would be no more socks to dig out from under the couch, no sweaty socks to wash, no single socks to match. Just think of it! No Socks! Devin looked down at the pile, skeptical. “But we need socks!” he said. And I knew he was right. We need socks: dry socks, clean socks, matching socks. The only way to get rid of the socks is to get rid of the people who need socks.

Minimalism can go wrong when it forgets that we are human and humans need things--because we *are* things: fleshy, physical, relational. We aren’t just souls, meant for contemplation and solitude. We are bodies and families and we need to eat and sleep and play. We need houses and food and beds and toys. And socks. 

This meditation is timely because (if you haven’t noticed) we are now deep in the Holiday season, when things (and things and things) are what everyone is doing and thinking about. Our consumer culture insists that “things” are what it’s all about: lots and lots of things under the tree and in the stocking so GET TO THE MALL! And I think we all can agree that this is a perversion of the Christmas spirit.

But no matter how we feel about materialism and greed, there is another kind of “thing” which comes with Christmas:

There is the advent wreath, lovingly decorated with greenery from the garden, the candles lit night by night as the family sings together (though sometimes out of tune). 

There is the tree, brought home with much pageantry, installed with wailing and gnashing of teeth (at least in my house), yet a thing of beauty, wonder; the children lie underneath it and look up through the lit branches. 

There are the ornaments, some passed down through several generations, some made with macaroni and glitter, but all meaningful, all embodying a memory, a person, a relationship.

Things are not evil. And sometimes things can be more than things: they can even be sacramental.

There are lots of stuff-objects-things to deal with at Christmas time, and I think it is an appropriate time to think about things, and the physical nature, the thingy-ness, of our own human reality. Because this is the time of Incarnation, when we celebrate the fact that God became a baby, that Spirit became…a thing. If God did not scorn “things” then neither should we. God became a child and played with toys. God became a carpenter and worked with tools. He made breakfast for his friends. He gave bread, wine. He rode a donkey. He wore sandals (if not socks).