I’m one of those people who for years thought more was better, more was fun, more was – well, more! Maybe you know someone like me. Maybe you are me.

• There are thousands of books in my home. Or does it just feel like it? I’ve looked at all of them. The only ones I ever read from first page to last are from the library. (I’m sure it’s the deadline thing that does it.)
• I have it in my head that one day I’ll give frequent dinner parties for twelve. To that end, I've stockpiled flatware and dishes that haven’t been used in thirty years. My constant dining companions, Teddy (woof) and Mazie (meow), don’t go in for fancy china. Teddy, in fact, prefers to carry her chicken livers to the carpet. And, come to think of it, I don't even know twelve people.
• Bags and boxes of photographs, never sorted or filed or scrapbooked, reside in dark closet corners. When I finally, in desultory fashion, begin to go through them once every decade, I realize that many are of people I can’t name, at places I can’t identify, depicting events or moments lost in the mists of time. (The keepsake photos were placed tenderly in frames or albums years ago.)
• Ditto with bags of letters from childhood chums barely remembered (“camping is really fun, wish you were here”); people who have drifted so far out of my life they will never drift back; distant relatives going on at full braggadocio about their kids; and toddlers who didn't sign their Picasso-like artwork scrawled on lined legal pads.

The wail of the clutterer: Where did it all come from?

Those things already mentioned constitute just some of the “too much” I’ve been living with. After a recent sit-down to think things over, I found that everything fits fairly neatly into three categories: nostalgia, bargain, and mall medicine.

The first group contains things left to me by dead people: My uncle’s photos of his time at the Cherry Theater, my dad’s wedding ring, Grandpa’s large desktop pencil sharpener from the '30s. A hoard of like-new paperbacks and coffee table volumes from an elderly neighbor. My beloved grandmother's key ring. This category is also filled with treasured childhood items. The teddy bear who is the same age I am, a set of Childcraft my parents read to us when we were small, drawings my mother did at the New School in New York three years before I was born.

The second encompasses those irresistible finds: Dollar books from the library on subjects as various as my jackdaw interests. Garage sale gewgaws. Silk Hawaiian shirts from the thrift shop. Neat stuff left on the street in the once-a-year city cleanup. And I'd rather not even mention eBay lest it further incriminate me!

The third is probably the easiest to explain because so many of us do it: Unchallenging jobs, mean bosses, the evening news, sickness in the family, marital angst – any pessimistic thought that mindlessly sends us out to buy something pretty or delicious or entertaining for the little “bump” of pleasure or relief it brings. The 'delicious' is evident to anyone watching me walk away. All the rest (DVDs, clothes, lotions, kitchen gadgets) can be found at any point your eye alights in my home.

I've thought about the "too much" over the years, especially when I felt inordinately tired of dusting, moving, shoring up, and otherwise caring for my STUFF (yes, George Carlin speaks to me from the grave). And I've always had a grudging admiration for Shakers, Zen monks, and my own great-grandparents (hardy Oregon pioneers on Dad’s side, talented milliners and tailors on Mom’s) who did a lot with a little.

Then, after warnings I missed or ignored by a mile, came this rainy day spell that most of us are suffering through. Perhaps it was the widespread drought that made me forget about rainy days. Or maybe I was so caught up in my own little world of technological gadgets and mailed movies and rocketing house prices that “bad times” no longer held any meaning for me. But here they are – and I’m taking my cod liver oil dose of reality along with everyone else.

Being without work and needing something to stifle the fear that sometimes pounds on my chest like the Secret Police, I did something I never thought I could. I tackled the photographs and actually threw away a lot of them. Okay, admittedly most were duplicates or so blurry I couldn’t tell if it was a bear in the zoo or my former husband (I should have married the bear).

But the main thing is – I DID IT and it felt wonderful! Good photos that remained I packed into boxes for my siblings, with the rather uncharitable thought that they could worry about where to put them.

Photographs led predictably to video tapes. These would go to a brother, the yard sale king (or, more accurately, the one with even more OCD tendencies than the rest of us). I kept anything family related. It wasn't much. The wedding of my gay cousin before he realized he was gay and my niece’s increasingly prominent roles in her ballet school’s annual Tchaikovsky extravaganza. Into boxes went the Murder, She Wrote reruns, royal funerals, presidential speeches, and Civil War documentaries that can be borrowed from the library if I should ever again hanker to see them.

Before I knew it, it was time to conquer the biggest hurdle both in size and emotional baggage - my library of books. I began to make what occasionally felt like Sophie's choice. Can I bear to give up that book on graffiti that I've toted around the world since God was in short pants? I felt better by assigning books to designated piles. Outgoing, Maybe, Never. That last meant it was so precious it wouldn't leave my sight for love nor money.

Over the intervening weeks, it's amazing how many maybes and even quite a few nevers have made their way to the outgoing pile. To borrow a phrase from a great series of books by Perry Buffington, one of the cheap psychological tricks I've used is to tell myself that there are people who will be as happy to find my books as I was.

Another trick that can do wonders once the shock of its implication wears off is to remember that one minute after you're dead, all you own belongs to someone else.

Is any of this easy? No. But the more I carve my life's collection of stuff down to a palatable and quickly transportable size (the latter if, heaven forbid, I lose my house), the lighter becomes my stress. LESS REALLY IS MORE!. And it's a magical feeling - one I especially need to feel right now.