Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Toss out the mess and keep the rest

Scott Dickensheets

Friday, May 15, 1998 | 10:34 a.m.

EVEN IF I'D been inclined to watch the "Seinfeld" finale -- which, Lord save this humble blasphemer, I wasn't -- I couldn't have seen the TV through the heaps of stuff in the living room. Books! Clothing! Toys! Papers! We are, of course, spring cleaning.

It's entirely natural, this seasonal impulse to empty the nest of its winter accumulations, and it sounds so harmless: "spring," with its sunny connotation of lightness and renewal, and "cleaning," which brings to mind French maid outfits. It suggests a weekend spent flicking a feather duster over an end table, filling a trash can or two and chuckling over memories sparked by a rediscovered baby shoe or box of snapshots. Certainly not the drama of adversity and survival it's become at my house.

Things are actually better now than they were a few days ago, when we appeared to be living in a busted pinata, most of everything we owned piled in the living room or on the back porch, awaiting sifting. It looked like post-hurricane footage on TV news, complete with my family wandering dazed through the storm-tossed wreckage.

Except this was a storm of our own making. The plan: Throw everything together, then go through it, subjecting every piece to withering scrutiny. Do we really need this? At the end, we'd have a clutch of carefully selected, useful items. It makes a certain amount of sense, which is to say none, and we began with all the high spirits you'd expect, which is also to say none. But it had to be done. We had stuff stuffed everywhere, mindlessly saved things stacked on top of other mindlessly saved things. "I can't believe how much we have," my wife marveled as the pile reached the point where you'd need Sherpas to mount the summit.

The process of elimination was difficult. "Are you really going to keep that?" I repeated as the kids clung fiercely to every broken toy, armless action figure or piece from some long-lost game.

It's a question I had to ask myself, as well. I have many items perhaps best described as "lifestyle etcetera," and any thorough spring cleaning must involve an unsentimental pro-con weighing of their true value.

*My Shaquille O'Neal sneakers

Pro: These are verrrry cool black high-tops with a swirly white pattern. The wearer instantly identifies himself as fly, phat, jiggy, da bomb.

Con: They look silly on me. I am not fly, nor phat, nor jiggy, nor da bomb.

*A spare golf club

Pro: Although this driver is a bit worn and no longer at the leading edge of golf technology, it's still a fine club undoubtedly capable of long, clean drives.

Con: I don't play golf. I have no idea where I got this.

*My manual typewriter collection

Pro: I may yet write the great American novel on them.

Con: None of them work.

In the end, the decisions were surprisingly easy -- I kept almost everything. The golf club because it may someday serve as a handy self-defense item; the Shaq shoes because who knows when I'll need monster traction in the low post; and the typewriters just because.

And so it was that while everyone else divested their cool junk, I hung on to most of mine, largely subverting the entire spring cleaning process, which threatens to consume a second weekend. Perhaps the fall cleaning will go better.