I spent a couple of hours going through over 1,000 emails received over just three days and unsubscribing. Order olive oil, hiking gear, use a parking app or read a Substack and you end up on a perpetual email subscription. And unsubscribing is not a simple click. Like postal delivery, that is cluttered with political placards and catalogs (although there are fewer catalogs), email is mostly junk. And our world is increasingly cluttered. Like our closets, the accumulation of stuff happens incrementally until one day, we’re overwhelmed. Some of the clutter is invisible. Like the giant garbage patch in the Pacific or the satellites that orbit our planet. It’s one thing for me, in my private space, to collect Frankoma pottery or sew quilts. But my stuff is contained in what is defined as my space. It’s my junk and it ain’t bothering anyone. But without most of us noticing, our general world has become cluttered. Our common, shared spaces are now filling up. I recently drove to Birmingham, Alabama, tracking from North Central Florida through Georgia. And along the way, once unique communities have been rubber stamped with the same, ubiquitous retail franchises: Love’s with an Arby’s, Hardees, Taco Bell. In slightly larger town, the strip malls expand to include Starbucks, T-Mobile, a Wal-Mart, Texas Roadhouse, Chick-Fila. They all look the same. They all feel the same. We’ve been convinced that we all want the same. And the homogenization means we don’t have to think or create or be original. We just have to pick THIS or THAT. It feels like an upgrade at first. Admittedly, when we got our Chick-Fila in Alachua, it felt like an upgrade. But we lose something. Maybe these small towns, with their new Dollar General and Jack’s Chicken, retain some jobs (maybe create a few local, minimum wage jobs) but they’ve lost something. And maybe we’ve been duped, tricked into thinking we need more stuff. We believe that the Starbucks Grande Latte is superior to a simple (and cheaper) cup of coffee brewed at home. That the McDonald’s bacon egg and cheese biscuit is easier, quicker than something home made? And then there is all the garbage. The wrapping, the plastic lids, the ketchup packets, the cups and plastic forks. How is that better? I drive a car, use the fuel, swing through a drive-thru to pick up my pre-ordered Chick-Fila only to create garbage that will take 1,000 years to decompose. It feels increasingly heavy and opulent and grotesque. We’re all living like dictators and sovereigns: consuming and expecting some servant to take away our chamber pots. And those buckets of crap are literally getting poured over the starboard side into the oceans. When will we realize we have enough? We don’t need more. Life needs to be smaller, simpler. Just eat at home. Grow some of your own food. Smaller and simpler may not be easier or quicker. But who convinced us we needed quicker?
My homemade sourdough bread take planning and timing. But that loaf of bread is superior to anything I could buy – even from my local artisan bakeries. And if we don’t eat it quick enough – it becomes croutons. And I start a new loaf. My pears, at the height of their season right now, get sliced and set to ferment into vinegar. Or canned with cherries to make cherry-peary jam. Or spiced pear syrup for shrubs.
I like to cook. I like to control my plate and my gut. I like to reduce my imprint on the world. I compost. The coffee grounds enrich the blueberry orchard, which grows enough blueberries each season to put up for the year. Maybe this year I will get pecans (if the crows and squirrels can be run off). I’ll seed my carrots today and hopefully plant my new crocus corms (aiming for a saffron harvest in November). But, I don’t want to eat out or shop. That area in town populated with strip malls and retail outlets I prefer to avoid. I don’t need more clutter.
