George Carlin died last Sunday. His comic philosophy was all over the news. Most relevant for me was his rant about STUFF. I am up to my eyebrows in 40+ years of STUFF! And George appears posthumously all over radio and TV, reminding me that it’s all just STUFF. I am pleased and only a little surprised at how easy it has been to eliminate so much of it. So how do you handle all your stuff? When I was sick in January watching dreadful TV, there was a program 
called Clean House where families with way too much STUFF are persuaded to get rid of lots of it so the bossy host and makeover team can fulfill the show’s mandate. Why do people accumulate so much STUFF? And why is other people’s stuff so dreadful? As George said “Other people’s stuff is shit and your shit is STUFF!” Glad to see the back of most of it. Regrets later.Then in the NYTimes yesterday was a lengthy article about the tyranny of the HEIRLOOM! Melinda doesn’t want the mahogany table from Nana and Jonny doesn’t have room for the Deerfield
chest. I am looking hard at all this STUFF. If you are going to spend real money to put it in storage it better be because you want it not because X left it to you. I have said goodbye to a lot of real drek. I just hope my children appreciate that they will not have the three week, four dumpster purge to handle when I die. But there’s still time and Italian STUFF is so much more interesting.
