Stuffed and mugged to death

As my girlfriends and I have one by one gotten divorced, I've been called in as moving support as we've transitioned from our marriage homes to our divorcee pads.

Because of that, I've been privy to a lot of personal stuff, and since I’m a thinker and an observer — oh all right, a busybody — I’ve noticed something: We have waaaay too much junk. Most specifically, mugs.As I began to wrap up what had to have been 20 mugs, I asked Sara, the latest to move, if she really ever intended to serve 20 people coffee or tea or hot cocoa at the same time. She had mugs proclaiming “I love you!” from men who obviously no longer did, mugs from clients who dumped her as ruthlessly as some of her former boyfriends and mugs from companies that went belly up back when you could get a cup of coffee for 50 cents.

I mean, who’d actually want to drink in all that bad mojo?

Of course, it goes beyond mugs. As a woman who rarely follows her own advice to her kid — “One new thing in, two old things out” — I shudder at the thought of what it would take to move me. A forklift, I suppose, for the shoes alone.

But I live in Marin, the land of excess, where the thinking is, too much stuff? Expand the house or buy a bigger one!

And then we go out and spend about $4 a month on an issue of Real Simple magazine, which tells us how to reduce clutter and simplify our lives.

I have an idea on how to do that, and it won't cost a dime: Stop buying stuff!

What’s cluttering your closets? And go count how many mugs you have, right now. (I've got five.)