All of us save or collect things. I personally am attracted to anything kitchen related…serving dishes/platters, I have a large collection of scrapers from Pampered Chef, utensils, tablecloths with matching napkins, etc. My sister loves hair-related products and gnomes. My husband collects remote controls, and my brother-in-law collects tools. I’ll stop right here so I don’t throw my entire family under the bus.
I used to collect spoons, salt and pepper shakers, decorative plates, along with teacups and saucers. The only kick in the pants I needed to get rid of those collections was cleaning them several times a year since they were displayed for others to see.
In the last several years I have adopted a minimalist lifestyle. Every six months I go through my closets, drawers, and basement. If I haven’t used something in six months, I sell or donate it.
What really got me thinking about cleaning out my house of things I don’t need or use, or something that others would find questionable if I fell off the face of the earth, was my stepmother’s passing in 1997.
I traveled to my dad’s house to help him go through her belongings and decide what was going into his annual garage sale, what should be tossed, and what was to be donated.
There was a section in the basement of her crafts that was curtained off. I found some unusual things behind those curtains that made me come home and start purging my house of anything that might be questionable.
Fast forward twenty-seven years. A very quick decision was made to put my mom into an assisted living facility. Prior to that, she lived in independent senior living. On the same property is the assisted living facility so it was an easy move to a smaller apartment right across the street…and there was an opening.
Since my sister lives out of state but would come home for the move and to clean up the apartment afterwards, I started packing things. This wasn’t going to be difficult because it was a 2-bedroom apartment and I had just shy of three weeks to get this done.
I was in for a rude awakening. I started by collecting boxes and going by mom every day for one or two hours. Each day I’d pack four to six boxes, bring them home, and wash or clean everything. Each box was the size of a paper box or larger. There is a pile in my basement for rummage sale items, donation items, and items that my mom would still need to use in her new home.
Starting with the kitchen, I did just the upper cupboards and that took fourteen boxes. Also, two 55-gallon trash bags that were half to three quarters full of garbage. By the time I was done with the kitchen, it exceeded twenty boxes and at least three or four more garbage bags. In order to stay on top of this, I needed to clean out each box each day, wash or clean each item, and take the empty boxes back the next day.
I did this for a little over two weeks before my sister arrived to help me. My mom saved everything…and hid it all very well. She had every report card from her school years (she’s almost 94), holy cards from funerals with the obituary stapled to them going back over sixty years, pens, pencils, plastic bags, gift bags, cottage cheese and yogurt containers, bottles and jars, hundreds of photos of people my sister and I didn’t recognize, dozens of rosaries and prayer books, clothes that she hasn’t worn in thirty years, all investment and bank statements, electric company statements, every greeting card she ever received in her life…and the list is endless. I don’t recall ever working this hard every day for three weeks until the move was over, the old apartment was cleaned out, and was scrubbed end to end.
Every part of my body ached. Sometimes I cried because I didn’t understand why she saved so many things. I checked in with my sister on a daily basis before she arrived and told her that she will not believe this. She didn’t believe it…until she saw it. She hid her feelings and anger a lot better than I did.
It’s over. Two dumpster rentals later, at least thirty fifty-five gallon garbage bags, tons of recycling, an expensive lesson with the Got Junk company, numerous cuts and bruises, and many sayings of the Serenity Prayer. We finished yesterday, my sister went home this morning, and at this moment it’s literally ten hours since I’ve gotten off my couch. I’m exhausted and took a very long nap today.
I’m taking some time off from everything for about ten days and then I will start going through the hundreds and hundreds of items in my basement to prepare for a rummage sale in a couple of months. I will also continue going through my closets and drawers to rid my house of non-used items. I don’t want to put my children through what I have just been through for the last three weeks.
And you shouldn’t either. Just think about it.
Back to Basics 