Eve O. Schaub > Quotes

“As I worked I continued to be a bit terrified in the back of my mind that it would be awful in the end, a big mishmash of nothing in particular, and there I would be, having wasted a whole week of my life destroying things I wanted to keep.

But I should have trusted the long history of women who've come before me making rag rugs from everything that wasn't nailed down because it wasn't like that at all. Instead it was like a big, incredible tapestry that just happened to--if you could decipher it--tell a million little stories from my life. I could look at it and see my old lace slip and the girls' party dresses and my high school rainbow tie-dyes, the Irish kilt and the Halloween clown pants and so many, many other things. It was all in there somewhere.

I felt like the miller's daughter in the fairy tale, the one who stays up all night spinning straw into gold. But who needs yellow metal, anyway? The was way better.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“I don't think hoarders prefer squalor. Rather, I'd theorize that when yucky things happen, for some the attachment to objects is so strong that they must exist in denial rather than confront the cause: the clutter. The hoard. An overabundance of objects with no proper place to go.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“So what do you call something that our body has no need for and that, when we take it in, creates toxic by-products in our bodies resulting in debilitation, disease, and untimely death? Well, doctors call that a poison.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Sugar

“Personally, I've come to understand that I haven't been on a journey to give my house a coffee enema and make it whistle-clean from top to bottom. I take way too much joy in rediscovering all those things that I've been collecting since I was a kid, always searching for the things that felt "real"--things that felt genuine, had stories.

I shouldn't have to give up my love of going through old boxes and making discoveries of things I forgot existed or imagined must have been given away years ago, as if I've sent a care package to myself from some distant past I only half-remember. Suddenly, surprisingly, a box full of memories will bring it all back into sharp focus.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“It was a mess, but it was a happy, cozy mess. A mess of lovely, largely happy memories. I felt lucky to have them, despite the disorder of it all...”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“I don't like to brag or anything--but I really am exceptionally gifted when it comes to the "Stuff" department. If I had a title, it might be "Her Royal Highness, the Queen of Crap." I could look snootily down from high atop my pile of ancient magazines, holding a scepter of dried bridesmaid bouquets, bedecked with a crown made entirely of those extra button packs that helpfully accompany sweater purchases, proclaiming "SAVE IT!" in an emphatic yet regal tone.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“In one way or other I was going to have to confront every one of the things I had deemed worth keeping--or, at least, not worth the distress of deciding about--and reevaluate it. Over and over again. Although I have yet to figure out what drives my compulsion to save, I know this much: it is the thought of making a bad decision, one that I will some day regret, that keeps me up at night.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“Unfortunately, our culture doesn’t seem to remember much about how you celebrate things without buying a bunch of unnecessary stuff and without consuming a bunch of unnecessary sugar.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Sugar

“I have a fond daydream of a day when, like normal, unclutterd folks, I can bring people through my house without hesitation, without secrecy, and without closed doors. More than that, I envision a day when I can confidently stride into every room of my house and find my children's birth certificates or my high school year book or a needle and thread whenever the need presents itself without breaking into hives.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“So I'm still afraid. It's a big *part* of who I am, just like my things. But it isn't *who* I am, and that is what makes all the difference.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“So, once again, I'm practicing trying to follow my own admonitions, the lessons the Hell Room has taught me: to trust myself. Keep less, use more. Be imperfect. Doing these things feels like stepping off a cliff into thin air, but it's paid off before when, after ten years, I finally took the medication; when after eighteen years, I finally opened the Hell Room door in earnest and decided to tell the world my ugly secret; and when, every single time over the last year, I made a decision to keep (what if I'm a hoarder?) or a decision to discard (what if I'm filled with regret?). No decision that we make about anything in life is 100 percent safe, and I know now *that's* was kills me.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“I had come to understand that sugar, while fun, is nutritionally expensive. Why would I want to waste my allotment of it on vending machine cookies or breakfast cereal? Why not save it for that something truly special? Americans instead simply decide to have it all—the good, the bad, the ugly—and then are tragically surprised when health ramifications ensue. No one ever told them sugar could be really, truly harmful.”
― Eve O Schaub, 無糖生活的一年

“There are many shortcuts in life, but perhaps none that come free of consequences. Sugar is one of those things we have manipulated into giving us lots of shortcuts: to better taste, to more convenience, to ever-higher food industry profits. But at what costs? As the old saying goes, if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Sugar

“I began the process of cutting up my random fabrics into strips. Of course, I chose easy things first, items that didn't' hurt me very much to cut up: torn sheets. A flannel nightgown so tattered it could never be worn again, one of Steve's worn-out t-shirts, couch upholstery.

The resulting balls of fabric yarn that I wound together after cutting astounded me. They were gorgeous--each one prettier than the last, which made me braver.

I took some photographs. And I heaved a sigh. Things in me were changing, I could feel it...so many months focusing on Stuff, Stuff, STUFF had made me bolder. What's the worst that could happen? I thought to myself. It reminded me of the day I finally, after ten years of kicking and screaming, took that first half pill [for OCD]. To someone else it might be no big deal, but to me? It felt like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“The only way to ensure that our existence creates no harm in the world is…not to exist. Whoa. There was more to it than that, but that was the gist: I kill stuff (whether actively or passively), therefore I am. For the first time in twenty years of meat avoidance, I wondered: Is abstaining from meat more hypocritical than helpful? Was I pretending to help the world while denying the fact that my very existence caused, by extension, the death of animals, plants, insects, and microorganisms all the time? Another of my favorite writers, the farmer-philosopher Joel Salatin agrees: “The most inhumane perspective is the one that denies the life-death-decay-regeneration cycle. Everything is constantly eating and being eaten.”61”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Sugar

“instead of throwing it outside I brought the bit of gravel up to my office and placed it on a little wooden box as a pedestal on my desk, to remind myself that just because our culture accepts something, doesn’t mean it makes any sense.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Garbage: Recycling Lies, Plastic Problems, and One Woman's Trashy Journey to Zero Waste

“what on earth were we going to do with this?”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Garbage: Recycling Lies, Plastic Problems, and One Woman's Trashy Journey to Zero Waste

“You can only close so many doors in your life before it starts feeling awfully small.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“After all, alcohol is a potentially addictive poison, but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying a glass of it with dinner on a regular basis. Likewise, I want to be able to enjoy a bit of fructose—potentially addictive poison anyone?—in the occasional dessert. For me, that’s part of the joy of life.
So I’ll have my glass of wine and maybe a small dish of the amazing gelato at that Italian restaurant. But I’m walking right by ninety percent of what’s for sale at my local supermarket—row after row of sugar-sweetened beverages, snacks, candy, and convenience entrees. We drink water, snack on whole fruit, rudely ignore candy, and cook from scratch.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Sugar

“purchase some intended-for-disposal packaging if we were going to remain fed, at least for a little while.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Garbage: Recycling Lies, Plastic Problems, and One Woman's Trashy Journey to Zero Waste

“It somehow made sense to me to draw big, sweeping analogies between the modern-day cultural avoidance of real social contact in favor of reasonable facsimiles thereof—Facebook, Twitter, interactive video games—and our modern-day cultural avoidance of real, fulfilling nourishment in favor of reasonable facsimiles thereof—fast food, processed food, convenience food. Is modern society based on our collective desire to run away from consciousness/deep feeling/God? Is it possible that a practice of what Alex called “Holly Food” could represent the fledgling beginnings of a way back to … what? Spirituality?”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Sugar

“This year had taught me that, just like anything toxic—alcohol, nicotine—we need as a society to start handling sugar (fructose) with care, as potentially addictive, potentially dangerous. I wondered, Can we even do that? Do we have the self-possession to realize that “moderation” does not mean “whatever the amount I eat is”?”
― Eve O Schaub, 無糖生活的一年

“Once, several years ago, I was looking around for something and moved a piece of furniture only to behold behind it a fuzzy little ball of...what? I looked closer, which is always a bad idea, adn jumped back with a screech. Of course, it was a dead mouse. A dead mouse that had been there long enough that it looked a little--what?--petrified.

So I did what any normal person would do in a similar circumstance. I immediately, that very minute, sat down and wrote a story about it. I wrote and wrote until I was pleased with the dead mouse story. And then I used a piece of cardboard to life and slide the little mouse corpse into a small white box--the kind you use for jewelry. After all, I reasoned, I had just written a story about him! It felt like something worse than abandonment to get rid of him now...we were linked! Connected through the sacred ritual of storytelling. And anyway, what if this story ended up, you know, famous? What if my dead mouse story ended up being my "The Lottery"? Wouldn't it be incredibly neat to still have the original thing that inspired it?

Yes, this is the way I think.

So you can see the situation is bad. I have at least one dead rodent that I have kept ON PURPOSE.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“I’d never encountered an actual transfer station before.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Garbage: Recycling Lies, Plastic Problems, and One Woman's Trashy Journey to Zero Waste

“Important. It’s all terribly important. Until suddenly, one day, it isn’t. Who”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Clutter

“My Favorite Tomato Sauce Tomato sauce is a perfect example of a store-bought product that virtually always contains sugar, yet is very simple and cheaper to make at home without sugar and it will taste better to boot. This recipe makes about 4 cups of sauce, which can be used in everything from lasagna to soup. • 3 tablespoons olive oil • 4 garlic cloves, minced • 1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes • 1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes Cook oil and garlic in a medium saucepan over medium heat until it smells good, but before the garlic begins to brown. Stir in all the tomatoes with their juice. Let simmer until thickened, between 15 and 20 minutes.”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Sugar

“What about (insert random trash item here)?”
― Eve O. Schaub, Year of No Garbage: Recycling Lies, Plastic Problems, and One Woman's Trashy Journey to Zero Waste

“Do we really give this little of a shit about what we’re putting into our bodies, our kids’ bodies?”
― Eve O Schaub, 無糖生活的一年