April 13, 2025
My partner fell into The Minimalists’s movement around the time we started dating, some sort of a decade and a half ago. At that time I couldn’t tell a Podcast from a text message (seriously); and Bluetooth sounded to me like some sort of dental emergency. I’ve always struggled to keep up with technology, or perhaps have managed to evade it enough to get by.
Thanks to her, however, I’ve implemented a lot of positive changes in my life over the years (still fumbling through cyberspace though). But at that time, I wish I had been more receptive to some constructive communication regarding the subject of “letting go”. Not from each other, Moses no. But from our stuff.
The PJ Problem
We didn’t really have that much of it, stuff that is; or so I thought. When my partner, Jessica, very slowly introduced minimalism into our lives, I may have thrown a hissy fit or two over some of her very minor observations. One that comes to mind was the fact that I was once in possession of, no shit, 17 pairs of pajama pants.
You know the ones. Many of us would unwrap these every Christmas: “Aw sweet, more lay around and do nothing pants. Thank you Santa (wink)!”. Years later, there it squatted like a stack of old soft, oversized buttons: the stratified threads of, I guess 17 Christmas’s. Sure they came in handy in college, when I basically laid around and did a lot of nothing but walk to my classes- sometimes, sadly, while wearing those things.
But after school’s out, after I’m an adult, a husband, a father, a respected member of my community, so many pajama pants later one could look at this accumulation and assume that I wear them everywhere I go: to work, to the store, to court hearings: “Hey look, it’s Pajama Man!”
Are we just supposed to keep going with this? Or not going, depending on how you look at it? And why in the hell did it take me so long to thin the herd?
I was, at first, more defensive than bewildered when this…observation was brought to my attention. At that moment I was irritable because I knew I had no good reason to cling to all of these stupid pajama pants. It wasn’t as if I even tried to attach a note of a memory or something that clicked: like which year I received which pair of pants, or wearing certain styles on specific days of the week or even how they fit; it didn’t matter.
In a deprecating defense of my defensiveness, there was a time when I would actually wear through all of these pants before doing a single load of laundry: I scored that a +1 for efficiency. My argument, when it came down to it, was: “…and I like the way this one feels when it’s, like, sort of coldish – oh, and I love the pattern on this one. It’s tearing in the crotch, but, um, they’re actually really comfy…”. But, um, nothing. My shaky reasoning was clouding the actual root of my resistance, which was that I simply didn’t want to let go of them.
We assign our things identities and memories and we sew them into our personalities, such to an extent that we begin to clutter our actual sense of personal identity. We do the same thing with our problems; we give them personalities and badges of dis-courage and fortune and luck and shame. But it’s not obvious to us, because it’s a slow burn, folks.
The minor saga of “Pajama-Gate“ took some time to unfold, and just like many unwelcomed habits, refusing to let go might sting. It’s not a sharp or acute effect, it just sits and festers, ever-bulging with time and waiting for us to figure it out.
The Gift of How to Receive
For me it took meeting an amazing human who actually had her life together and the courage to bring up the subject of clutter; and then we made three kids and we do laundry every single day of the week.
Even after having children I’m still receiving pajama pants but I’m not allowing them to accumulate, otherwise I’d have something like 30 pairs of soft trousers, multiplied by three unknowing little souls who will also be subjected to some perpetual cycle of this cheap cotton caboodle club. The difference though is that the kids get to grow out of it, while we, of course once fully grown, are physically equipped to take on enough clothing to last several lifetimes.
Let’s be honest, these are just goofy, yet comfortable clothing items we’re talking about. And children’s clothing you can hand down to siblings or donate to a local family or shelter but what of the junk we all receive for every holiday imaginable? People buy crap for other people unconsciously, which is far better than possessing the habit of buying crap for yourself.
But at a certain point, especially when you watch your children receive items of all colors, shapes, sizes, viscosities, bandwidths, personalities, bluetooth ranges, principalities and AI capabilities, you wonder (hopefully) how the literal hell does this stuff just keep coming? Boundaries are a very real concept that a lot of us tend to avoid ever bringing up. They often serve as a sociological trigger for the accused, alerting them that they are doing something wrong.
But the reality is, if you don’t tell them what is right for you, then the packages of what they think you’ll need in this world will keep on coming (and will rarely hit the mark). Take these little moments as opportunities to give yourself less to deal with and complain about, while giving them the gift of knowing more about what fulfills you and your loved ones.
If you’re lucky enough to have someone in your life ask you what you or your child wants for their birthday or for Christmas, or for all the other reasons people need to buy stuff- please be honest about what type of gift might actually enrich your lives. And if it’s pajamas, whether you’re a child or an adult, just breathe…and grow out of them.
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