The worth of things…
Jeroen
Not all those who wander are lostNetherlands Veteran
My father died exactly a year ago today. Last year around this time I had my first look at the contents of his apartment, which I found very confrontational because it was like he was still there, in the furniture he had chosen, his gadgets, his art. I had to wait several months for the legal issues to become clear. Then my mother and I had to inventory his apartment and find out what things were worth.
In the end it became clear to me that almost all the things in my father’s apartment would give more trouble to sell than the money I would get back for them. It was a good lesson in letting go. I kept a few things for sentimental reasons, but most of it went to charity shops, and to a clearance firm that I contracted.
In the course of a lifetime we gather many things, and then we need a home to store them in. But these things we cherish at the end of our lives have to be cleared up, often at a cost. Little that we leave behind still has value after we pass, and there is much to be said for living a life with minimal possessions, like our monk friends do.
Reflecting on things today…
Comments
I've lived in my house over 30 years, and it is full of stuff that I don't want or need. I'd really like to get rid of a lot of it, but most of it has no place to go but the local landfill, and those are already filling up way too fast with stuff people bought at some time and no longer want. I long ago changed my buying habits so that now part of the process is "how will I get rid of it when I don't want it anymore?" I don't buy much.
Yes, I now live with my mother in a rather large house, and we have the things from her original house in England, we have my possessions from living independently for 20 years, and we have what we decided to keep from my fathers things and had moved here. So we too have a lot of stuff, and a lot of my things are still in the moving boxes from five years ago.
We decided to tackle a larger declutterring process over the summer. Every day we open a box, sort its contents into stuff that should go to the recycling or be kept. Today it was a box of mixed goods: my bathrobe, my copy of the Art of Tolkien, a bunch of graphic novels, and my collection of fridge magnets I decided to keep, and the rest of the books and some soft furnishings went to the recycling. It was like a treasure hunt.
Eventually where there are now a series of movers boxes with my stuff, there will be a smaller set of movers boxes for the second hand store. They will then sort it into stuff they can sell or throw. But before we call them to come with a truck to take it away, we will make a pass through the house to gather all the other possessions that we want to get rid of, and add them to the boxes.
Remember to buy food
Still sleeping on the floor (in case I fall out of a high bed)
Trying to get rid of my most cherished beliefs
A great many of the miscellaneous bric-a-brac (about 97.5%) in my house is just filling space. I am in the slow jettison era. It is an ongoing situation as my toss out often fall behind my "well whay's new." But going from 99% to 97.5% I consider progress...slow, granted, but progress.
Who knows, I may get to 96.3% this year.
Oh!, Lobster, my cherished beliefs are in bin XXYZX-123-A2-1A-3Z .
Or maybe tha was.....There somewhere...
Peace toall
This is a burden I might prepare for... if the natural order of things pans out as Life and Nature intend, I will not only have a great number of boxes of my own personal stuff to sort; I will also have my mother's antiquities, goods and chatels to dispose of.
4 piles: keep, sell, charity, chuck.
I have 2 brothers to consider, but the older one is disinterested, and estranged from my mother and me. The younger has moved to Michigan, and lives in a beautiful home, replete with everything he could ever want. Besides, transferring stuff across the pond is not without problems, financing, being the main one.
Of course, my daughters will also want something, perhaps, as shall close, loving friends. But the majority of her possessions will go to auction. My heap of 'stuff' will also need sorting, but 'want' and 'need' will be driving factors. Yard sales and Car Boot sales are great social events if nothing else!
Yes, for my mother and me we have realised we had everything we actually needed in our own home, and in going through the boxes with the things we kept from my father it’s a question of what we would like to keep, and what we can find room for. The same also with the boxes of my old household goods from many years ago.
Going back over our memories, my mother and I recalled a number of instances where my father had asked us for help with organising his home. It became clear only when we took stock of the apartment after his death that every piece of storage space was filled to the rafters with ‘things’. Clothes, linnen, fancy crockery, papers, foto’s, he had kept everything. And it was also clear that this had become a burden to him, that living in an apartment so full of stuff was choking him — there was no room to breathe.
This is what led us to the realisation that although we had a larger home, it was also full of things we didn’t need, didn’t use and didn’t appreciate. There are many things here we are just holding onto because they were of use in the past — papers, old computers, old coats and shoes. I said to my mother, it can all go.
There is a Netflix series, I believe, called 'Hoarders'. It actually makes for tragic and horrific viewing. I then found this information:
"Hoarding is a neuropsychiatric disorder.
It is usually triggered by an emotional incident, episode or experience, and is not laziness, unwillingness to cooperate, or indifference to cleanliness.
In 2013, The (American) Psychiatric Association re-classified Hoarding as a distinct disorder, separate from OCD.
The centres of the brain in the frontal lobe areas, which were much less stimulated in hoarders than in other healthy volunteers or those with OCD, were the areas responsible for focused attention, motivation, choosing between multiple options and regulation of emotion. 50% of the factors are hereditary, so hoarding often runs in families.. "
Hoarding is an attachment primarily to things that are of great sentimental value, due to their relevance or connection to a person or a time period of significance. Other stuff then accumulates to such an extent, that the original desire to 'keep hold' of something, is utterly and completely obliterated, and buried under tons of completely useless 'stuff'. My daughter's partner Mark, had to clear his mother's house, to sell it. Just clearing away the extraneous stuff, took months (his mother is still alive) and the huge storage locker (think cargo shipping container) he hired, to store what she insisted on keeping, is ⅔ full. My daughter finally managed to gently convince her to dispose of 47, variously-sized glass jars, she had stored away, for jam making. She hasn't made jam in over 15 years. Their jars were all stored in the fridge. That is hoarding. I am determined to never succumb to such an affliction!