I took a necessary hiatus from my de-cluttering, organizing, and launching-online-bookstore project (they sort of go together) for a week because my nephew came to stay with us while his parents led a mission trip.

I love him so, so much, but the whole experience has led me to reevaluate whether I actually want (and would be capable of competently parenting) children. It’s endearing when, for example, he pokes his head into my room first thing in the morning, says, “Hi, Mowique!” and is then shooed away by some other adult who will keep him occupied for the next four hours while I sleep. It’s an entirely different thing when it’s me who has to get up with him at 7 a.m. or 7:30 a.m. or some other such hideous hour, and pretend to be coherent while blowing bubbles in my pajamas.

I always try to coax him back to sleep, of course, but he’s very good at dodging that: “But I’m wake now!”

Monday, the day his parents were slated to return, I took him to the zoo. He was bouncing off the ceilings with excitement–he had literally climbed the walls of our booth at Fargo’s the night before, propping himself on the table with his hands while his feet scrabbled up the vinyl. He was also in full-fledged two-year-old perverse mode. I drew a few askance looks throughout his visit when I’d publicly collapse into helpless laughter and say things like, “You’re just being as difficult and impossible as you can, aren’t you?” I said them affectionately, I promise. Monday was the worst, though. We’d leave a building at the zoo and he’d immediately want to turn around and go back in. At the wallaby enclosure, he wanted to go back and see the monkeys. (They are at opposite ends of the zoo, which is located on the side of a mountain, which means that to get from one to another you have to go down one steep hill and up another, or vice versa.) Ditto for seeing the elephants when we were watching the hippo. (The hippo is just shy of the primate house, while the elephants are further up the hill from the wallabies.) I had brought the stroller, because on our previous (Wednesday, I think) excursion to the zoo, he had decided he didn’t want to walk, and I carried him up all those hillsides (and got a vivid reminder of how out of shape I am). After lugging an empty stroller around the zoo, I started to think carrying him might be better.

This is good-natured grousing. I love the kid. I love that in a week’s time, he went from having no idea who Goldbug was to knowing exactly where Goldbug is on every single page of Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. I love that he calls Winnie the Pooh “honey-pooh pooh pooh.” I love that he picked up the phrase “Sounds like a plan” from me and uses it appropriately. Randomly, at the zoo, he started saying, “There’s a good reason for that, Mowique,” and I had no context until he said, “There’s a good reason for that, donkey,” and I realized it must be a line from Shrek, which we watched together. He says men with beards have dirty faces. He called the female orangutan at the zoo “byoo-ful.” He’s mesmerized by the enormity of the hippos’ gaping maws; “He open his mouf!” could have been the week’s catchphrase. He pronounces “oatmeal” something like “ate-myowe,” and it took me awhile to understand him. When my mom asked him, “Are you precocious?” his response was, “No, I’m not ‘cocious! I’m Zach-i-YUH!”

But I was very relieved (does this make me a bad aunt?) when his parents returned. Very tired, very glad to be off morning duty. Very thankful we have such a close relationship, him and me, but also thankful I’m not the only one.

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Last night I read a book called It’s All too Much! by Peter Walsh, who apparently was on the TV show Clean Sweep (which I’ve only seen once or twice, not having had cable). I’d found the book at Goodwill, and the previous owner had underlined some early passages in pencil but hadn’t marked anything past page 20 or so. This makes me think perhaps the previous owner didn’t get any further in the book, which is a shame, because it’s a very useful book. At least for me, at this stage of my life, it is.

Walsh starts with the premise that our stuff isn’t the main problem but a symptom. He challenges readers (and clients) to think of their ideal life, and then look at all the ways (time, money, energy) their clutter is preventing them from achieving that life. And as basic as this sounds, it was actually pretty powerful for me–and powerful in a good way, for once.

He then challenges readers to think about the reasons they keep all the stuff they do, the emotional ties, the need to perceive themselves in a certain way that might not reflect reality. I started thinking about certain books that I’ve bought and read, or not read, and kept, not necessarily because I liked the books or plan to ever read them again but because I think they’re titles an author and/or an English instructor just ought to have. They might look good on my shelf. They might help my prospective colleagues (someday, years from now, when I have a campus office) see how well-read I am. I get stupidly competitive when I read about authors’ libraries–do I have as many books as they do? If not, why not? How many of theirs have they read?

As Walsh points out, those are pretty lousy reasons for keeping stuff.

He’s got a strict system for things like shoes, books, movies, and CDs. He suggests sorting through everything and getting rid of one for every five you keep. Then, every time you bring a new item of that type into your home, you get rid of one you already have. That way your collections don’t grow and don’t overwhelm your space. In theory, I think it’s a good idea. In practice, I’m pretty sure I can do it with shoes and maybe even with movies. I almost never buy CDs anymore, so that’s not an issue. Books? Ummm…..yeah.

But I am definitely weeding out more volumes from my personal collection to add to the online bookstore!