I have a wife and six kids. Yes, I know, six. The youngest is five years old, and the oldest is pushing sixteen. Each kid brings an exponential compiling of things. To put it bluntly, I live in a house filled with shit. Not literal shit but shit as in stuff, crap, junk, or chotskies. It’s a sea of clutter and mess. When I get out of bed in the morning, I traverse mountains of consumerist debris just to get to the kitchen for breakfast. Shoes, shoeboxes, and stacks of fast fashion piled on top of every latest gizmo and gadget known to man. In the kitchen, I relocate a minimum of ten appliances that do virtually the same thing. Eventually, I find the handheld coffee grinder I’m looking for. Then I rummage through a cabinet, shifting through the overload of coffee beans, K-cups, filters, presses, and instant packets. I grab the bag of dark roast whole beans, shake some into the grinder, and grind. I forgo the teapot on the stove and turn on the electric kettle that’s shoehorned on the counter with the other neglected stainless appliances.
The fridge is equally jam-packed. Boxes of food, if they can be called that, are stacked so tightly together that I have to plant my feet against the base of the fridge to get enough leverage to yank out a carton of eggs and a stick of butter. The cabinet to the left of the stove is stuffed with pots, pans, and skillets of every imaginable size. I rummage through them until I find a medium-sized one that can handle my two eggs, then center it over a burner. The flame flicks to life and warms the pan as the water for my coffee boils. When the pan is warm, I lay down a coating of butter, then crack the eggs and watch as they slip into the melting fat. I go to the drawer of utensils to locate a spatula, but get so overwhelmed by the plethora of choices that I don’t even bother to flip my eggs over. Once the coffee is done and the eggs finish frying, I battle the kitchen table for a spot to eat.
Laptops, books, magazines, flowers, fake and real, and stacks of mail, loom in front of me like a feudal lord’s prison tower. As I’m about to move one stack of magazines, I glimpse the date. Printed tiny next to the barcode reveals the magazine is five years old. Five years. That’s one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days that this magazine has sat here. The layer of dust on top tells me it probably hasn’t moved in at least three of those five years. And I can’t help but think, how did I get here? How have I allowed myself to keep this useless thing for one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days? Had I become that numb, that desensitized, to what was happening around me? Something inside of my brain short circuits. Maybe that’s not right. It was more like an awakening, as if I had been sleepwalking through the last decade of my life and had just come to.
Rage overtakes me. How could I have let this happen? How did all this crap get here? I see all the objects transform into money wasted before my eyes, then helplessly watch as that hard-earned cash goes up in flames, like a house made of lint. Throwing things away, especially if they’re not mine, is a punishable offense in this house. I once made the mistake of tossing one of my wife’s expired coupons and didn’t see her naked again for two months.
I grab the magazines like I’d snatched an old lady’s purse and run for the garage. Shoving aside stacks of cardboard in the recycling bin, I stuff them underneath, hiding my transgression. I return to my breakfast just as my wife saunters in. Focusing on my food, I pray she won’t notice the missing magazines. She pauses before kissing me. I can feel her eyes searching the counter.
“How’d you sleep?” I ask, diverting her attention from the scene of my crime.
“Not great,” she says, kissing me on the cheek. “I think we should look into getting a new bed.”
“Of course. Whatever you think.”
She shuffles off, disappearing into the bathroom.
The rest of the morning, I think about what I’ve done. The act of throwing away something consumed me and invigorated me. After the kids and my wife file out of the house, I call my boss and tell him I’m not coming in today.
I scan the kitchen like an ancient conquering warrior surveying an army before him. Prepared to vanquish my foes, I clean out the kitchen, going for the easy small stuff like the carton of loose chopsticks jamming up the utensil drawer. Into the trash, they go. Bye-bye. I go drawer by drawer, cabinet by cabinet, extracting and analyzing each object’s use and function. In the first hour, I fill one garbage bag. I can see the surface of one counter. I didn’t even recognize the color; it had been buried for so long. It gives me a head rush, like smoking the day’s first cigarette. As I plow through the cabinets, I reduce my analyzing process from a few minutes per item to a few seconds. I cut through the clutter with ruthless efficiency like a lawnmower through tall grass. A second garbage fills in twenty minutes. I drop the bag on top of the other in the garage, but the sight of them bothers me. I can’t leave them like that to be found. The evidence needs removing. If I left it at the house, that opened the chance for it to be brought back in. So, I pop the trunk of my car and shove the bags in like two dead bodies.
I work for the next two hours without a break, never feeling more alive. I stuff my car with garbage bags to the point where I can barely fit inside. I drive to the town dump, where I throw the bags into the abyss of garbage with childlike glee. A manic smirk plasters my face. I feel like Spartacus, liberating the prisoners from the oppressive jail that was my own body.
I speed home with the windows down and the radio blaring. Singing along to The Clash hit, I Fought The Law. Walking into the kitchen feels like walking into an alternate reality. Different yet familiar. The lack of clutter makes me take a deep breath, inhaling the sweet scent of open space. I keep moving; work still needs doing. I strip off my button-down shirt and cut the sleeves off my undershirt.
By the time I finish the kitchen, the only things remaining are the stove, fridge, microwave, and toaster. The cabinets hold the bare essentials. Only enough plates, glasses, and silverware for each of us. Pots and pans culled to four. Drenched in sweat, I rest on the floor, admiring the day’s work.
The door opens, and my wife walks in with the kids in tow. They stand there in shock, looking at the kitchen. My wife’s eyes find mine after a time, burning with pure and utter rage. She, along with a couple of kids, I’m not sure which, as I wasn’t listening, berates me. They scream and shout until they tire themselves out. My wife doesn’t allow me into bed that night, but I don’t mind. Using my laptop, I research dumpster rentals. I find one that can be delivered the next day with an exorbitant surcharge for rush delivery. I gladly book it.
I work through the night in the basement, placing all manner of junk into neat piles for disposal. At midnight, I pass out from exhaustion, collapsing into a makeshift bed made from the carcasses of old stuffed animals and never used sleeping bags.
The faint sound of the doorbell chiming wakes me. I glance at my watch; it’s eleven already. I dash up the stairs just in time to see a truck pulling out of the driveway. Left behind is my dumpster. A surge of dopamine floods my nervous system. I don’t even bother calling work. They’d get the message that I wasn’t coming in by now. I check the bedroom to confirm my wife isn’t still home, waiting to continue reaming me out. Aside from the overflow of clothes, useless pillows, robes, and shoes, the room is empty.
I then hurry out to the driveway to inspect the dumpster. I shelled out extra for the largest one they had. It’s a beautiful sight. I run back into the house, knowing I’m under the gun for when my consumerist overlord and her minions will return. I go into the bedroom first, grabbing everything in sight. Clearing off the dressers, clearing off the bed, scooping it all into my arms, and hustling it out to the dumpster. I hurl the items into the waiting mouth of the blue steel beast. The items clanging into the metal stomach. Each clang causes me to salivate for more like one of Pavlov’s dogs. With my room cleared, I bushwhack a trail to the kid’s rooms working at a fever-pitch pace. I throw out books with an inch-thick layer of dust. Clothes and forgotten toys get bagged. I stumble upon a graveyard of electronics and wires spilling out like the entrails of a robot. What can be recycled I pack into my car, everything else I let the dumpster consume. Halfway through, I find a bladder bag meant for camping, which we never did, so why we had one was beyond me, but I put it to use. I fill it with cold water and sling it on my back, allowing me to push on without breaks. When my body reaches its physical limits, I resign to my car and deposit the bags at various recycling drop-off centers.
The trip takes me an hour to return home. I stagger in, beat, but pleased at the progress I made. The dumpster is halfway full. As I round the corner to the living room, I spot my wife and kids. The room seems to shrink with all of them in there as if someone was trying to stuff a thousand jumbo marshmallows into a thimble. It makes my skin crawl and my stomach churns. Anxiousness overwhelms me. Something has to be done. I’d worked too hard for my minimalist world to come undone. My wife glares at me. She’s on the phone with someone. Ignoring her piercing stare, I bound towards the smallest two children. I snatch them up, grappling them under my arms. They hiss and squirm like feral cats, clawing at my wrists for freedom. I hear shouting behind me, but I keep moving. I stumble out of the house with the two wild animals. As I approach the dumpster, I drop the kid in my left arm and try tossing the other kid into the dumpster, but he’s too heavy. Jesus, what were we feeding these kids?
Then I feel a dull thump on my back as my wife tackles me to the lawn. Tiny hands and legs swarm on top of me like ants on a piece of dropped candy, pinning me against the grass. I hear my wife shouting something on the phone in near hysterics. I try to wriggle free from the mass of small bodies but give up, my energy gone. Ten minutes later, I see flashing lights out of the corner of my eye. The weight lifts off my back, and I look up to find three cops, one with his gun leveled at my chest. Behind the cops are two paramedics. I roll to my knees.
“You think I’m the crazy one?” I shout at all of them. “Look at yourselves. Surrounded by pitiful things. Your minds scrambled into a constant state of want. You don’t even enjoy the things you have, just moving on to the next useless thing you’re misled into believing you need. But it’s all a lie. We need so little. Love, companionship, a little food, a little water, and a place to call home. What more than that is necessary?”
I look around at all the faces staring at me with pity.
“You know I’m right, but you’re all too far gone,” I say. “The capitalist needle supplying you with your steady fix, keeping you poor and mindless. Too scared to break free and see beyond the clutter. To see what’s out there and be whole again.”
I sink back on my haunches and lower my head. The cops move in and slap cuffs on me. They hoist me from the ground, leading me towards the paramedics. A cop uncuffs one hand and locks it on the stretcher. They force me onto the padded surface, and one paramedic cinches the strap over my chest, then loads me into the back. The other paramedic stabs me with an IV as the ambulance pulls away. I feel something warm spread through my veins. My vision blurs.
“We…need…so…little,” I mumble as the sedative surrounds me in darkness.
_
“How are we today?”
“Not a cloud in the sky,” I respond to Dr. Barth, one of the doctors here.
He smiles as he sits on the bench next to me in a field of birch trees.
“You’re up for review again tomorrow,” he says as he opens a notebook referencing his scribbles. “I think you’ve made significant progress. I think you have a good chance of being discharged.”
“Why would I want that?” I say.
“You don’t want to go home?”
“There’s no home to go back to. You know that as well as I do, doc.”
“You can start over.”
“That’s what I’ve done here, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose to a certain degree.”
“I don’t belong to that world anymore.”
“You really think that?”
I nod, that I do. “Do I have the option of staying if I want?”
Dr. Barth frowns. “I’m afraid not. At least not here anyway, but there are other facilities you can voluntarily check into if you still feel the need.”
I don’t respond. He sits with me a little longer, admiring the stillness of the environment. Then he checks his watch and clears his throat, “Well, I have to be going. Don’t think of the review as a negative. You’ve shown growth. Going back out into the world won’t be as bad as you think.”
“Sure,” I say, not believing him.
He puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I sit there a while longer, listening to the songs of the birds and the moaning wind through the trees, knowing this day would eventually come for me; I just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon. I get up and walk towards the main campus. Since being here, since being away from all the distractions and possessions of my old life, I notice more things, like the snapping of twigs beneath my bare white shoes and the way the light refracts off the dew on the grass in the early morning hours. I notice the simple things, the pure things, and the thought of losing them makes me want to weep.
An hour after nightfall, I get to my room. I slip out of my shoes and place them at the foot of my bed. My white linen shirt and pants I hang in the closet next to two identical pairs. A neat roll of four pairs of socks and boxers lay pristine underneath on a shelf above a canvas hamper. Aside from a toothbrush, they are my sole possessions. I remove my t-shirt and place it into the hamper. The window is open, and the warm air weaves through the protective wire mesh, surrounding me with a gentle scent of autumn. I lie down on the bed, pushing aside thoughts of what tomorrow will bring, and savor the fleeting time I have left in the safety of my empty white room.
