“Decluttering” seems all the rage these days. Just check the internet, which contains enough information and articles on the phenomenon to easily fill an entire basement and a garage: spend an hour, a day, a week discovering for yourself the “10 Rules,” the “27 Simple Steps,” the “50 Strategies,” ad nauseam. The hype surrounding the perceived benefits of decluttering –less stress, more energy, better sleep, etc. – is enough to make the most shameless huckster blush. It harkens back to days of yore when marketers would trumpet that their product could “grow hair on a cue ball.” (Indeed, while preparing today’s rant, I came across an interesting article discussing the origin and etiology of this very phrase, and others. See, e.g., wordhistories.net/2020/03/01/grow-hair-billiard-ball/. If you are looking for an enjoyable read over morning coffee on an unseasonably cold and dreary day such as today, check out the website.)
My own search revealed “6 Powerful Benefits,” “14 Amazing Benefits,” even one piece that claims there are twenty-five benefits to decluttering. I also discovered various decluttering benefit “checklists” that make it convenient and handy to keep track. And in case you still cannot figure out what all this fuss is about there are plenty of “professional” organizers to be found on the Inter-Google who would be eager to help you for a fee. You can even sign up for an online professional level course on decluttering. You know you have arrived when the venerable Cambridge and Miriam-Webster dictionaries both include “declutter” as a verb in their respective listings.
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Luckily, at age 71 I do not need an expert to tell me that I have acquired too much “stuff.” Rather, these days I have to keep my eyes peeled to avoid tripping over one thing or bumping into another.
Lately, I have been working in my basement, a space that is in dire need of reorganization. Initially, my mess arose from circumstances that were beyond my immediate control. However, I will admit that I have been remiss before now about making corrections.
I have been taking stock. Now, with winter fast approaching here at home and my upcoming and extended winter hiatus at the serious preparation stage, it is time to act. In the near term I will still be tending to my garden and yard, which means that I will be bringing most of the outdoor “stuff” down into the basement. And, because there is a lot of it, this task requires careful preparation.
No excuses. Everything is on the table: the garden items, excess clothing, furniture, all kinds of “stuff.”
What do I mean? Well, for example, recently I came across a large box on a storage shelf marked in my handwriting “Mom fragile,” which contained a portion of my mother’s fine China. I had packed up and removed this “stuff” from my dad’s home seven or eight years back when he moved into the senior residence where he spent his last days. Multiple sets of fine, hand painted China produced in Japan around seventy-five years ago, today sitting in a basement in a box gathering dust. It seems like a shameful waste. Yet, the mere thought of “decluttering” Mom’s valuables fills me with surging guilt. For one moment I feel a bit like Norman Bates, who discarded his dead mother in a rocking chair and consigned her to the fruit cellar.
It turns out that fine China is no longer a “thing,” like it was back when Mom was still a young woman. It is my impression that the teenage girls and young women of today no longer spend much time, if any, perusing the web, daydreaming about China patterns. I have read that Millennials hate the stuff, and most other of the things they stand to inherit from their folks.
I get it. Unlike these young bloods, however, I would consider swapping out my everyday dishes for Mom’s fine China, except fine China is not suited for reheating food in a microwave and it is too fine and fragile to clean in an automatic dishwasher. I recall that Lee and I rarely had occasion to pull out Mom’s China, or her crystal, or her silver flatware, for that matter, either during the holidays or even special occasions. Now with Lee gone, I have no occasion at all to use it.
The bottom line is that, despite my guilt, I do not need Mom’s China. (And I don’t have children for whom to save it.) A professional organizer might conclude that the best way to honor my mother’s memory under these circumstances is to get her stuff out of my basement and into the hands of people who will use and enjoy it.
One worthwhile professional tip that I gleaned during my research for this piece is to set aside the item you target for decluttering, then wait. After a few months, if you still do not miss it, it is a safe bet this item is good to go.
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And, believe me, Mom’s China is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I will have no trouble targeting other items for decluttering. The goal is to retain only those things that I will use (or wear). Of course, I already know that for purely personal reasons I am going to hold onto impractical things that have significant sentimental value, but only slight monetary value. For example, I will keep each book and tchotchke lining the shelves of my library.
Citizen Kane had his “Rosebud.” I do, too. In the end, what I decide qualifies as valuable “stuff” could surprise you.
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Of course, Lee’s remaining “stuff” constitutes a unique category of things. On some level because it was hers, all of it will always have value for me. Nonetheless, most it must go. I already have made several generous charitable donations consisting solely of Lee’s belongings, which I am certain she would have endorsed. Clothing mostly, but purses, bags, accessories, too, and other useful items that I knew people would be happy to claim as their own.
I continue to retain more of Lee’s “stuff,” such as additional items of clothing that I can touch and see whenever I open her closet door, miscellany that is far too numerous to itemize here, even several pairs of shoes. Lee had remarkable, tiny feet. Quite naturally, the remaining shoes are fashionable, but they are also wonderfully tiny. I feel silly admitting it, but among all of Lee’s remaining “stuff,” I am most loathe to part with these tiny shoes.
