Saturday, driving home from Ogden, I happened to look down at the gas gauge and was shocked to see I was riding nearly on empty. I always fill up at half a tank. Well, apparently not always. Everything associated with clearing our family house and handling estate business has distracted me from my usual routines. Plus, my downstairs is still in chaos awaiting the restoration guys to come install new baseboards and door frames. My brain is overflowing and not keeping me on top of things like it should. Oh, I made it home and got the tank filled.
I had brought a few items home with me from the house that day: a small arm chair, an electronic photo display, a yardstick from Roskelley's dress shop in Logan where my grandmother had worked in the 50s--not much this time. I added some of this to the pile of stuff already accumulating from the house: an ocean painting, a cabinet for vinyl records, a big bin of yarn I will be giving away, and a large stack of slides with two projectors and a portable screen for my part of the big scanning project, along with various other odds and ends that I now wonder why I even brought home.
I looked around at the accumulation of items from the house along with stuff I had removed from the guest room closet. It all just looks like clutter. It mostly is clutter. In fact, I will be taking almost everything from that closet and some other stuff to drop off for charity this week. Those things have been stored in there for years and never once been needed or wanted.
If this clearing out process has taught me anything, it's the very temporary joy we get out of stuff we accumulate. You could see it in the patterns of mom's accumulation. She literally left off in the middle of making an item and moved on to her next interest. Meanwhile, stacks of supplies related to the unfinished project remained, boxed up for decades, waiting for us to sort through after her death.
Each of my siblings had a different approach to the things they wanted from the house. Several of us (me included) wanted only a few items with memories attached. Some wanted a lot more. Two siblings really loaded up items, both furniture and minutiae. One brother just couldn't bear to allow anything to go to charity. After everyone had taken what they wanted from each room, he would go back and box up as much as he could and haul it to his house.
Thus the items in the house were distributed. As I told my siblings, this would not be an equal process. I wasn't about to limit everyone by the small number of items taken by a few. Nor would I force anyone to take more items just because some of the siblings were taking more. All of the stuff needed to go. Everyone got to have mostly what they wanted.
There were a couple of blips along the way. Surprising there weren't more, considering the number of siblings involved. But as it turned out, almost everyone was considerate and generous with give and take of items throughout the process. The one exception was the sister who showed up the least to help but who had the most complaints. On the last day of clearing out, she created a big brouhaha over a comic book, attacking people's integrity and fairness. But, as it turned out, all she needed to do was ask for a comic book, and she got it. There was no need for insults.
The same sister raised an issue over wanting a mirror that had hung in the living room. That mirror had been a wedding gift from grandma to our parents. We had all used it all our growing up years for things like checking hair and makeup before dates. In my Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass years, I used to stare into that backwards room as did Alice, and imagine myself climbing through and having adventures in that backward world. The mirror was up for grabs on Sept 23, our first day of clearing. One brother requested it. But later he decided not to take it. Another sister wanted it, but we forgot to tag it with her name, and a few weeks later, as we had arranged for all untagged items in that room, it was removed by our niece and taken to a charity shop. Nobody noticed it was gone.
Until the very last day of clearing, that is, almost two months later, when the difficult sister decided to ask for it, long after the deadline for requesting items from that room had passed. With a little detective work, we managed to find out that it was long gone. One sister (the one who had given up a comic book), went to the charity shop, but the mirror was no longer there. One brother even offered to post a picture and a reward at the shop in hopes of recovering it.
Wait a minute, everyone! The mirror is gone. It is not of great value. And in fact, it had a pretty ugly frame with a bow oddly positioned almost floating above the frame like a star on a Christmas tree. I took the opportunity to suggest we all just let go of the mirror. It's gone. And it's not the only thing. There are a lot of things from the house we will never see again. Our memories of those items will have to serve in place of owning the actual items. Not everything is a treasure. Not everything needs to be carried on in the family.
And the truth is, we all needed to be reminded that letting go of stuff is not only good, but necessary right now. You can't hold onto everything. For one thing, most of the stuff has little or no value. But also, in our own homes, if there's not a good place or a good use for it, it becomes part of the clutter that eventually our own children will have to clear away. And our children will not share those sentiments we held for things like that mirror. It will just be stuff to them. And then, the stuff will be tossed.
I've begun looking at my own home, my own stuff, with fresh eyes. I am seeing the crazy things I've held onto for no good reason for many years. I can see the things I could easy part with right now and never miss for a moment. For example, pillow cases. Over the years, when sheets wear out, the pillow cases seem to still be in great condition. So I keep them. And now I have a completely ridiculous collection of pillow cases I will never use. And I know I will never use them, because every time I buy new sheets, I get new pillow cases to match. Those extra pillow cases are leaving the house this week along with a pile of stuff from that downstairs closet.
And that's just one example.
As I think about the siblings that loaded up boxes and boxes of items, I wonder how much of that stuff will ever make it into display or use. Will they be glad to have it in the long run? Are those things treasures to them? Or will they mostly become worthless clutter after all?
For me, I'm glad I took the approach I did. I have a few small, special things and a couple of practical things that will move right into regular use in my house. Just enough stuff. And I have learned a valuable lesson in letting go of stuff. It's all stuff in the end. Mom didn't take her stuff with her and neither will I.
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