2020 gave birth to a host of new trends—but the one I got hooked on was far from #trending.
Besides the pain and loss, the Covid-19 pandemic will forever be remembered for the many fads that humans invented to beat the boredom and loneliness of lockdowns and physical distancing. From Dalgona coffee to homemade bread and from home workouts to virtual bingo, social media influenced many of us to do many things.
But the real first fad of the 2020 pandemic—the first human reaction across the globe—was hoarding.
Remember the toilet paper shortage in the US during the first few weeks of the pandemic? In India, that happened with sanitisers and food supplies.
On March 24, 2020, when the Indian government suddenly announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown starting midnight, crowds of people swarmed markets across the country to buy loads of, um, whatever they could lay their hands on!
Stores quickly ran out of basic food supplies like salt, flour, rice, and sugar.
My neighbourhood grocer later told me that there was no shortage in supply of food items, but every time he stocked the shelves, the first 50 customers would simply wipe them clean. "People would come and ask us to give them all the biscuit packs we had in the store," he said. "Everyone asked for the biggest size pack of the item they needed or they would simply pick up all the small size packs available with us. One customer bought all the 15 bottles of pickles we had on the shelf. I mean, how much pickle were they planning to eat in 21 days?"
This behaviour made the lockdown scarier than it really was for most urban middle-class Indians. Stores and online grocers were forced to cap the number of each item a buyer could get, leading to anxiety that the country was running out of food.
Now, we know that wasn't the case. But then senseless hoarding is nothing new for India.
The Oxford dictionary describes "hoarding" as "the act of collecting and keeping large amounts of food, money, etc.," In India, most houses are typically overflowing with the "etc."
According to a 2016 survey by online classifieds portal OLX, used goods worth Rs.78,000 crore were stocked away in Indian homes. This figure had grown almost 40% from just a year ago when the value of such goods was estimated at Rs.56, 200 crore.
It is hard to miss the "stuff" inside Indian homes. A "storeroom" is often a key factor when families are looking to rent or buy new houses. Often, in addition to the storeroom—which is either full or not big enough for the item that needs to be stored—families use balconies and spare bathrooms for storage.
A friend whose kids are now teenagers has two tricycles gathering dust on her balcony for sentimental reasons: "they learned cycling on these." Another friend has converted the two cupboards in the guest bedroom of her house as storage for her ethnic wear in addition to the three-door wardrobe she has in her room. And, of course, what's an Indian household without box beds?
The Oxford dictionary definition of hoarding states the activity is done "often secretly." And we saw an example of this not very long ago. In 2016, when the Indian government decided to scrap currency notes of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000, several housewives found themselves in a tight spot as they were forced to reveal their secret stash—created by setting aside small amounts from the total money given to run the household—to their husbands.
As someone who bought many-a-candies with the money from her grandmother's secret stash, the concept of "jamaa karo" (keep adding) is in my blood. One of my favourite places in my childhood home was the fascinating secret drawer in my mother's steel almirah where she stored what could easily be a year's supply of school stationery for her two children.
Since we lived in Delhi, which witnesses extreme weather, our bed boxes were always overflowing either with quilts and sweaters or with cotton saris and summer frocks.
And then there were trunks. The house had a customised storeroom that had cement shelves running to the ceiling, which were lined with aluminium trunks. "I got these three in my dowry," my grandmother would often tell me, pointing to the biggest of the boxes. One of them was so big that I often wondered if the entire storeroom was built around it because there was no way it could have fit into the door. (I wasn't really wrong. When my father reconstructed the house many years later, the door and part of the wall had to be ripped to get the damn thing out!)
So, of course, on March 25, I was among those who—instead of doing the sane thing and avoiding crowds to stay safe against coronavirus—felt a natural urge to "jamaa karo."
My pantry and fridge were filled to the brim. But "there must be something I am forgetting. Something that we will not have or are about to run out of—and that will be the one thing to help us survive Covid-19. I am going to be in trouble tomorrow," my mind kept repeating as I raced through the aisle, aimlessly grabbing and dunking things into the trolly, just like everyone around me. "I wonder when will I get to buy groceries next because there will be a lockdown!"
Just five days later, I made another trip to the grocery store. Even as the lockdown continued for over 70 days, grocery stores and pharmacies were operational and my family made at least one trip a week to get supplies.
Even thinking of that phase and recollecting all the details to write them here makes me feel exhausted.
The load of "stuff"
Between March and June 2020, my kitchen was FULL. It was full of people since everyone was working/schooling from home, it was full of ambitious dishes because we had spare time to try out new recipes (and bitterly missed restaurant food), and it was full of stuff.
One evening in June, I decided to try out a certain recipe that needed a pinch of baking soda. I browsed through my pantry—which by then meant most of the kitchen cabinets plus a few shelves in the guest bedroom cupboard—for several minutes, but I could not find it.
I had an awful lot of "stuff" in the pantries—it's only fair to refer to the setup in the plural—and I knew I had bought at least three small boxes of baking soda but where were they?
Were they hidden behind the four 1-kg boxes of cornflour? Or stuck under the ten 1-kg bags of sugar? Or had I put them in the drawer in the crockery cabinet that was gradually becoming a pantry, too?
The more I looked, the more places I remembered I had hoarded food in. The more hoarding spots I browsed, the more anxious I got about HOW MUCH food I had in the house. Each time I discovered packs or boxes that had been pushed behind on shelves, my brain screamed "WTF, why do I have this?" or "WTF, why did I get another one of this when this one's right here?" That feeling of WTF started weighing really heavy!
And then it happened. It was very sudden and very strange, and if someone else said this to me, I would probably roll my eyes at them. But a switch went off in my head and I knew I needed to fix myself.
I truly believe I had a way of life before that day in June 2020 and I have a completely different way of life after it.
Minimalism & me
By that day in June, my family and I had been stuck in our rented four-bedroom apartment in Gurugram for three months. Without access to a domestic helper due to the pandemic, we were responsible for all the household chores, which included caring for a three-year-old.
My partner and I were also working from home, which meant we needed to create a space for the extra monitor and keyboard his employer had sent to help him work smoothly, and some area for the kid to be homeschooled. (I had been working from home for over five years by then, so I had my corner all set.)
I have always prided myself on being a type-A organiser. My home always looked clean and tidy and everything had a home. Except that there were just too many things and their too many homes that remembering what was where was starting to get really challenging.
Trying to keep my calm after the baking soda incident, I decided I shall research how to make things better and fix this senseless hoarding situation. The obvious starting point was Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things.
I had first seen the Netflix documentary in 2016. The visuals of people's homes with lots of open space and not many things that needed regular dusting and organising incited a sense of calm. But back then, that was really the only big takeaway for me: if I have fewer shelves, I will have lesser "visual clutter" and my home will look as peaceful and beautiful as the ones in the documentary.
I had religiously practiced that, refraining even from buying souvenirs from the places we visited. We had no showcases or shelves to put such things on! But we did have cupboards and bed boxes and cabinets and shoe racks—and they were all FULL.
The thoughts and feelings I had while rewatching the documentary were very different. I realised that so far, I had been aspiring to simply hide my clutter from those who visited our home. This was the typical "secretly" behaviour of hoarders that the dictionary mentions.
And I did not want any secrets in my closet anymore.
The Jubilant July
On July 6, three volunteers from an NGO that works with homeless and mentally-challenged persons came to our doorstep to collect four XXL size black garbage bags that contained nearly 20% of all our belongings. On the same day, we donated another 20% of our belongings to three maids who have worked at our home over the years.
As those garbage bags, suitcases, and bundles tied in bedsheets disappeared from our living room, I could feel my head becoming lighter.
What did we discard? A very long list of items that I had not even realised I had collected! Dinner sets, teacups, glasses, mugs, cookware, bedsheets, clothes, shoes, purses, accessories, makeup items, books, diaries, quilts, carpets, mats, toys, mattresses, pillows, cushion covers, small electronics, gadgets, stationery items, and decorative items, among other things.
The biggest reason why we could undertake this massive ordeal was that the pandemic was still raging, which meant no one was visiting our home (so the garbage bags could be parked in the living room for days as we dumped things in them) and we were not going anywhere.
When I told my friends and family about what we were doing over the phone, they responded with cold "hmmm, okay." Most of them had never heard of this word, some others had seen the trailer of the Netflix documentary, and a few thought it was a crazy idea but instead of saying it out loud resorted to no reaction.
Another reason for the "hmm, okay" reaction probably was the fact that the world has been going through a lot. Everyone is trying to cope with their own issues. So there is very little reason for anyone to be interested in my sudden obsession with minimalism. **
But what the journey towards minimalism (and I am still on it) has done for me can help a lot of people through a lot of issues. The connection between an overflowing kitchen cupboard and mental health might seem outlandish, but it exists.
Today, my partner and I occupy only half of our cupboards and share one small drawer for our footwear. The empty shelves in our cupboards have freed up my mind in a way I didn't know was possible.
I am still far from where I want to reach. And maybe that's the reason I felt like writing this piece. I hope those who read this hold me accountable the next time they see me giving in to my hoarding tendencies. I also hope that those who read this look around and understand how much material stuff they own and give downsizing a chance.
I hope someday humanity leaves the biggest cult on the planet, capitalism.
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