A week ago I got an email from a friend who’d spent the weekend moving her in-laws into a smaller home. For hours she dug through piles of clothes, sorted stacks of paper, cleared shelves of countless nick knacks, lugged bags of unwanted stuff to the thrift store and carted a car full of trash to the dump. Overwhelmed, she wrote advising us to purge, to get rid of all the stuff that clutters our lives and bogs us down.
I understand where she’s coming from. I think about my parent’s house and cringe at the thought of clearing it out. It’s full of our relics. The shelves in my childhood bedroom are still lined with dolls my parents brought back for me from their travels 40 plus years ago. There’s a complete set of National Geographics dating back to the 1960s in a cupboard in the den. The basement has a room overflowing with art supplies: old tubs of cracked, dried out tempura paint and brushes too stiff to bend. My youngest brother is 45 now. No one has been in that art room in decades.
I hang on to this old newspaper clipping because it takes me back to my childhood. Some things have the power to transport you.
And yet, that stuff holds memories. I wore the strapless dress hanging in my old closet to my rehearsal dinner in 1988. The faded ribbons pinned on the wall in the playroom at my parents’ remind me of myself as a child, shivering on the blocks at swim meets, terrified as I waited for the blast of the starting whistle.
It’s a fine line between what is junk and what is history. I remember hiking in the desert where the ancient Native American artifacts we encountered were considered historical, the modern cowboy stuff junk. For those things the line was clear: 50 years. Older than that it had value; younger it was litter. And yet, I enjoyed poking around the old cowboy camps, looking at the rusted cans, trying to decipher their labels and imagining what it was like to travel the landscape on horseback before the advent of lightweight gear and detailed topographic maps. But I suppose you have to draw a line with that stuff somewhere. It’s less clear where to draw it with your own belongings.
My house is not overly cluttered with memorabilia, but there are things that I am reluctant to toss that most people would consider junk or at least worthless stuff. There’s a coat that belonged to my first husband that just hangs in the closet. I don’t really look at it and I certainly never wear it, but when it catches my eye, it brings back memories. There’s my racing shirt from my college crew days. It’s 30 years old now and I haven’t worn it in ages, but I every time I glimpse its telltale blue and white with the distinctive Y on the back, I can feel the heft of the oar in my hands and the rhythmic back and forth of the slide as we pulled the boat through the water. I have a suitcase full of letters that my mother wrote me. I haven’t reread them, but maybe I will? Maybe Avery will? I can’t throw them away. They capture a part of my life that is gone and maybe sometime I will want to look back on it. Maybe.
I think my friend would argue with my maybe. And she’s right. The truth is I’m unlikely to read the letters and someday someone will have to take them to the dump. But for now, I find it hard to let them go.
People suggest that you set some guidelines to help you filter through your belongings and determine what's worth keeping. Maybe a year for a piece of clothing, maybe a bit more for a piece of gear. If you haven’t used the item in that time, it’s time to let it go. The principle is to think about what you really need and to recognize the fact that these things do not bring happiness.
And I totally get that. I agree things don’t bring happiness, but I also think it’s a little more complicated, at least for me. What things do do is transport you to places that bring happiness. Whether it’s the literal transportation you get from a pair of skis or the figurative trip you take when you look at an old picture or a piece of clothing, things can be a vehicle that trigger memories and bring joy.
It’s just that too much stuff overwhelms its power and saddles your loved ones if they are left to pick up after you. So the lesson that I take from my friend’s words is to take stock. To really look at the things I’ve stashed in the dark corners of my basement or garage. To open the cupboard doors and take things out. Hold them in my hands. Do they move me? Do they tell me a story? If not, maybe it’s time to let them go.