Margaret liked her stuff.
She wasn’t the least bit materialistic. Not in the traditional sense. With her, it was all about the memories. Her sentimentality made it impossible to part with anything which had the slightest story attached to it. In her house, whole rooms were devoted to boxes of old pictures which she planned to sort through some day, her mother’s teacups, her deceased sister’s treasures and furniture with a memory. As the last living relative, it had all come to her and each teacup and trinket meant something. She loved to walk among it, touching this box and that chair and remembering.
When she had to leave her house, it took months to decide what she could part with, and in the end, the answer was, “not much.” Her apartment in the retirement home was crammed to the ceiling with boxes and stacks of precious items. Even her bathroom cupboards were packed. She sat looking at it all and wondered what to do.
Then she fell. Twice. Her family sat her down and had a serious conversation with her about moving to long-term-care where she could get the help she needed and staff could monitor her. “But what about all my things?”
Her son leaned across the table and looked in her eyes. “Mom, what do you think will happen to all this when you die?” His words startled her because she knew the answer.
No one in her family cared about any of the items in the boxes.
This time, with her daughter’s help, she relentlessly discarded. She exhausted herself deciding and her dreams were full of insecurity as she questioned herself. Once she discarded an item she could never get it back, so each decision felt monumental.
She moved from her apartment into one room in my neighbourhood. When everything arrived, only a small pathway remained down the middle of the floor for her to walk and about 25 boxes sat stacked outside the room, waiting for a place to land. Her daughter’s red face dripped with sweat and Margaret sat on the bed and cried. What could she do?
Start early
Planning for independence later in life starts years earlier. The Swedes have a tradition where cleaning out the superfluous and gifting to friends and family the treasures starts at 65! Most of us North Americans wouldn’t consider starting that early, but Swedish children seldom have a huge “clean out” job because of it.
I learned this lesson when I became a widow at 53. My husband liked his stuff and collected many items. His stockpile of DVDs was epic. He filled countless binders with newspaper clippings and kept every church bulletin. He loved books, all things musical, the list went on. It fell on me to decide what to keep, what to sell, what the children might like and what to throw out. A huge job, I attacked it in layers.As I packed and sorted and tossed and made decisions, I thought to myself, “I never want my children to have to do this for me.”
Margaret could have gone through her house years ago and learned that not everything that had meaning to her mother or her deceased sister meant a lot to her. There were probably items she had no idea about which could have been discarded. If you don’t know why you are keeping it, don’t.
Clear the clutter
Look around your home. Check cupboards, closets, drawers and storage rooms. What do you have which you never use? Are there boxes and bins you haven’t opened for years?
Start with one room. Give yourself as much time as you need, but keep at it. When you think you are done, give it a few days, then go back and see if there’s anything else you can get rid of. Reward yourself if you find something. Then move on to the next room. Margaret let her possessions posses her. They became so large that they affected her quality of life as she aged. Don’t let that happen to you.
Take pictures
If an item brings special memories to you, but won’t mean anything to your family or friends, take a picture of it, then discard the original. It will be thrown away anyway, in the long run and now you have a photographic keepsake to remember it by.
Storage as a last resort
Because the boxes outside the room couldn’t stay and the pathway down the centre of the room wasn’t safe, Margaret’s family knew they had to do something. They saw how distressing this was for their mother and wanted to respect her. After a long discussion, they came back with an idea.
“Mom, we can’t keep these things here, but we know they mean a lot to you. Would you be willing to pay for storage for them?” Like many seniors, Margaret was frugal, but she also realized that this was an answer which reduced her climbing stress levels. Her memories would be safe, for now.
The end of the story is that Margaret’s family paid to store her treasures until she died, and then discarded most of them. Was it worth the investment? They decided that honouring their mother and what was important to her mattered, and this solution worked.
You may not need as radical a plan as that. If possible, start today and clean out a drawer, a cupboard or a room.
Then keep going!
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