My wonderful, 80-year-old, mother passed away this spring. I loved her so much and we had so much fun together over the years. But she left a house stuffed with possessions that I am now having to deal with. I don't even know what to do with most of it. Boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff. Stuff she had collected with hobbies and interests in mind, and stuff she had purchased with an eye to reselling. She had a large inventory of things that had been in her antiques business. We had a huge garage sale a couple weeks ago and hardly made a dent even though we sold things very cheaply just because we knew it had to go. It is so depressing and very overwhelming. Once in a while anger flares at the situation I've been put into. While I would like to just take time to grieve for her and remember all the happy times, instead I find myself trying to deal with all the stuff. The whole situation has really made me re-evaluate the amount of possessions in my own home. Yes, I am bringing home some things from my mom's house, but I am also getting rid of some of our clutter. As I have more time - after dealing with her house - I'm going to seriously organize and clean out my own home. I have promised my daughter I will not leave the same kind of mess for her to deal with.
As much as I want to clean out my mother's house and get rid of the stuff, I am appalled by the number of women who come up to me at a garage sale with an armload of things and make comments like, "My husband is going to kill me, I already have a houseful of this stuff, don't know why I'm buying more?", or "I'll have to wait until my husband goes to bed to sneak this stuff in." After hearing these comments from people at the garage sale, and incidentally, from people on all the list serves I'm on, from knitters to quilters to doll collectors and costumers, I really wonder about why we all feel we need so much of everything. We need to think about how big our stashes are, why we buy so much, and how much we are realistically going to accomplish in the rest of our lifetimes. If you have such a large stash you have to sneak it in, you probably shouldn't be buying more.
My mother's stash finally grew to the point where family and friends couldn't visit because there wasn't enough room unless the weather was nice enough to be outside. It was a huge source of contention between my parents at the end. We couldn't bring either of my parents home for hospice care because there wasn't any room. She got to the point where she was spending all her available free time trying to liquidate it instead of doing things with family. She found out how much of a burden acquiring more than you can ever use is. I don't want to make the same mistake she did, I want to learn from it.
Okay, off my soapbox now. I have to get to bed early so we can do another garage sale tomorrow.
~Jane
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ReplyDeleteI stopped by from Java's blog hop...
ReplyDeleteMy mom died suddenly at 59. As the oldest daughter I had to go through her things. It wasn't as "bad" as your mom's collection, but she saved enough stuff that I didn't know what was important to her and what she'd want us to keep.
It was hard.
I have told myself I will never do that to my son. So I go through my belongings a number of times each year and purge. Very little is important...
Jane, I know exactly what you mean. My grandmother was a hoarder, and it made get togethers at her home impossible. My mother struggles with too much stuff as well. When my father died at the age of 53, I could not believe the amount of junk he had stashed all over his home, garage, and barns. Cleaning it up, sorting, and selling it all was a monumental task for my grandmother and I.
ReplyDeleteAs a third generation junker, I know I have the hoarding gene, and I'm fighting against those tendencies in myself. I have come to the realization that stuff = time. The more stuff, the more time that I have to spend moving it from place to place, dusting it, and organizing it. That's time that I could be spending with my family or that I could use to pursue all the creative pastimes that give me so much pleasure.