Every Monday I post Real Life Minimalists, a profile of one of my readers in their own words. If you’d like to participate, click here for details.
Today, Clara reminds us to deal with our clutter now, rather than making our heirs clean it up later. Simple living makes for a more serene life and legacy.
Clara writes:
Two years ago, a very close friend passed away. He had no family, so it fell to me to empty his house, garage and shed. It was a monumental task. This dear person loved life, loved people, and lived life fully. And he amassed almost 70 years of possessions, both related to his occupation and hobbies, and personally. He saved everything. Not old newspapers and garbage, but everything else. And almost everything was coated in dust. For example: piles of tax files going back to the 1970’s, obsolete audiovisual equipment, every photo, birthday and Christmas card ever received, travel mementoes, and clothes heaped in piles and stuffed in drawers. Knick-knacks and, ornaments from who-knows-where, every gift ever received, and way too much furniture. He liked to buy stuff, too, and if one was good, two was better. He could not part with anything. I remember years earlier asking him about a cardboard box with a dozen empty jam jars in it. He said he was planning to sort nails in them. The dusty box of jars looked 30 years old. The basement was packed with such items on shelves with narrow pathways between them. The garage could not hold a vehicle it was so filled with stuff. He built a shed and filled that, too.
It has taken two years to deal with the stuff. Initially it was easy to make decisions. Friends took things that were useful to them. Clothes went to thrift stores. Furniture mostly went to the dump, paper and metal to recycling. But it was difficult hauling heavy things up the steep stairs from the basement and down the steep stairs from the second floor of the house. And it was summertime, and very hot and humid. I am grateful for the hard work of the friends who pitched in to help me.
As much as I loved this wonderful man, he left an enormous mess to deal with, and I harbored resentment for quite a while. How dare he not deal with his stuff, and force others to have to do it! Working on forgiving him was part of the hard work of that summer. But I have come to realize it was an illness. It was too difficult for him to make decisions about getting rid of things. So he simply did not, and went on with his life. I remember he had certain responses that he would give whenever someone said, why don’t you get rid of this or that. Depending on what it was, he would say, it’s too valuable, I paid a lot for that thing, it is useful for my work, I have plans for it, that object has memories for me, it was from my Mom, etc. Always a reason to shut down any offers of help to clean up.
What the experience has taught me:
I don’t ever want to leave such a legacy for my loved ones to deal with. That is not a memory I want them to have of me. And I love my family too much to want such an experience for them.
I don’t want to live surrounded by clutter. Or have the responsibility of excess clutter in any room, closet or drawer. Since this experience, I find the sight of clutter makes me anxious. No matter how large or small, I am learning that every item I possess must be categorized, sorted, organized, displayed, protected, cleaned, repaired, sold, etc. and take up space in my head. That’s a lot of responsibility!
What I am doing about it:
I have been downsizing my own possessions. I look at things more critically and objectively and ask myself: do I need it, do I love it, and can I let it go? Much has gone and I don’t miss a thing I have released. Things from the past kept for sentimental reasons, are not so important to me now. They just kept me rooted in the past, not in the present. A few things are kept, but most have a new life now. I am happy about that.
I am working toward creating a simple home and lifestyle that is peaceful and serene, with beautiful artwork on the walls and space to spread my arms out and dance. And I will have more time as well as space, because I will have less stuff to look after. It will be very freeing.
{If you’d like to learn more about minimalist living, please consider reading my book, The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide, or subscribing to my RSS feed.}
When my “larger than life” friend died suddenly, I experienced a similar range of emotions. Now that the grieving is over and estate is sold, I am trying to apply learned lessons to my own life.
I can totally relate to this post. I had an aunt who passed and left an apartment packed full of “pretties” that she had collected over the years from all her travels. She never had any children so my sibs and I had the task of emptying her place. It took hours and hours of packing and I experienced the same feelings as Clara. It was the turning point for me and the first step in my journey towards minimalism. I too now have a downsized home that I consider to be simple and serene with artwork on the walls along with empty spaces I have learned to embrace. It really is freeing and until you experience it, it’s hard to understand.
Finally someone mentions having room to dance! That’s why I don’t want too small of a home. I like truly living in my place, which includes dancing & other forms of fun exercise. I know people must think I can’t afford stuff with all the space I have, but I love being able to move around without bumping into things. I can even do a brisk walk while on the phone. lol. Plus it gives everyone the illusion my home is always clean .
Dimond- you sound like me!! We recently got rid of some living room furniture and though hubby wants another coffee table, I love the open space!!! People think we are poor because of your lack of stuff but it doesn’t bother me. :)
Dimond and Heather, your comments made me think of Katy Bowman, a biomechanics teacher whom does not have any furniture. She advocates furniture-free as a way of encouraging more movement in our days. She is not a minimalist specifically, but your comments resonated with a lot of what she says. If you search “katy bowman furniture free”, I’m sure a lot of fun stuff would pop up. Cheers to a healthy 2016!
I won’t be going furniture free. Floors are not a place I want to be sitting or lying on, especially in an area that has plenty of bugs & other creatures. I just don’t have a need for much. I was renting a furnished place that was filled to the brim with furniture & other stuff. Even after I had the realtor move a couple of things out, it was still way too much. I realize now that I don’t need the expense of renting a furnished place when there’s little that I need & most can be found inexpensively in comparison to the monthly fee.
I was in the same spot a few years ago. My dad had moved in with his girlfriend and then into an assisted living facility when his health declined. Meanwhile, his house, full of stuff, had been infested with mice. Before his health declined too far, he requested my help to get the house ready to sell. As his health disintegrated, he needed the money from the stuff in his house to pay for the assisted living facility, so I just couldn’t throw everything away. Ninety percent of the surfaces in that house had been pooped or peed on by mice. It was disgusting. It took me a year of driving an hour and a half one way to his house on Saturdays to get that house cleaned. Primarily by myself. I understand completely the desire not to want to leave that same kind of legacy for your children. My father died two years ago in April, so I’m pretty much over it and glad it’s behind me instead of in front of me.
My husband’s almost there, but still thinks that when he dies I’m going to open the Museum of Steve. Which I’m totally not going to do. He’s dealing with the stuff from his aunt and uncle’s place, but he has siblings to deal with it with him, which has its good points and bad points. He moved a bunch of stuff out and then his brother and sister-in-law brought a bunch of it back in.
I love this post and can relate also. I was left to help clean out 2 houses, both hoarders. It doesn’t matter how neatly labeled or “organized” things are, someone has to deal with your stuff when you are gone. I am not leaving a legacy pile for my son. I have one bin that has what I think he might want and if he doesn’t, no big deal to me. When my parents passed, my sister and brother hoarded the items in their home, as if the memories will make them come back. I have only my grandmother’s ring. I have a digital frame, so I took all the old pics I absolutely loved and scanned them to the frame. That is all I have and need.
As far as myself, I don’t want a tiny home but could live in something about 700-900 square feet. I like being able to have a cat and dog and do my yoga and artwork and let my son spread out his Legos.
Oh, yes…I’ve been there. My mother passed away a little over a year ago. She left me an 8000 square foot house, absolutely FULL of stuff. Nice stuff, valuable stuff, not just toss-to-the-curb stuff. I live across the country from this house, so have had to travel back and forth for a year to do the clean-out. I upgraded some of our furniture and other stuff, gave stuff to family members (3 vanloads worth), and have discarded, donated to charity, and sold truckloads. And more truckloads. And still the house is fully furnished (although less densely than before) and there is more stuff in closets and storage rooms. I have surely felt the resentment of having to deal with her decades of collecting and inability to part with anything. The upside is that the experience has cured me of wanting to collect ANYTHING. And has motivated me to downsize, organize, and purge what I have left. I do not want to leave this kind of burden for my children to have to deal with.
I’m not going to call it selfish because I realize impending death is something most don’t want to deal with. BUT, leaving others your mess to deal with is so selfish. My friend has 4 sisters. Her mom fought cancer for 2 years and was lucid till her death. She refused to talk about or deal with any after matters. She left behind a 4000 sq ft house filled with her things. The stress of hospice care, funeral, burial and then dealing with human greed pushed them over the edge and none of them speak to each other anymore. The fighting was so intense. Over the piano, mattresses, clothes, even light fixtures. Watching it all was so horrible, I vowed never to do that with my kids!
Good to know I’m not alone in this. My parents unexpectedly went into assisted living 2 weeks apart & I’m dealing with 65 years worth of their possessions. In better times, I’d ask Mom why she had all this stuff. Her reply was she was a depression child & they never got rid of anything. They certainly didn’t, but that didn’t keep them from accumulating. I am resentful of the time it’s taking & I have to learn to deal with that. I’m coming to the point where I can bring in an auction house & let them deal with the rest.
My husband and I had 3 people pass away in one year and it was our job to empty their homes out. I was angry and overwhelmed ! Now I realize that I learned a valuable lesson along the way. Never again will I hold onto things I don’t use. I’ve downsized our living space, our clothes and everything else. As Clara said, I don’t want my children to have to be burdened with the task of getting rid of my stuff.
“It will be very freeing.” As a person living with just the things I need, it is very freeing indeed! It also makes my room more relaxing. ^^
As for your dealing with your good friend’s things, I am very sorry you had to go through all of that and I feel your pain. I’m trying to deal with all of my mom’s things currently. She not dead yet and I still live with her, but when she finally moves into a home and leaves all of her boxes of stuff behind in her garage, guess who has to deal with it? Currently, I am having my mom do the decluttering method of getting rid of one item a day. It is working so far and she seems eager to do it which I am very happy about. = ) But she still has way too much stuff. So much that she has to have a “throw off table” for all of her stuff in the dining room. She can’t just put the items away in an organized spot. Don’t get me wrong, she organizes things, but in a messy way from what I’ve noticed.
But I have been blessed with her wanting to move into a condo in the future. That means, she will have to have a moving sale and she cannot take all of those boxes of stuff in her garage with her. If we successfully move into a condo without a lot of space to store boxes of extra things and have room for just the essentials, she and I will have to deal with all of her things in the near future. I’m crossing my fingers for that to be the case! I really do not want to deal with all of her stuff after she dies and just like the author, I will not be leaving a legacy of junk for somebody else to deal with. I’m happy I started my minimalist journey early in my life and I plan on continuing it for the rest of my life. C:
I was so proud of my mom when she moved out of her home to come live near me. We walked through each room with a legal pad, and she pointed and I jotted down just the things she would take with her. Everything else we gave away. She had expensive belongings, so I know that had to have been hard on her, but she had a 30 day escrow. Eight years later I moved her from assisted living into a board and care. We repeated the same moving routine (point and jot), and once again gave away the extras. She is gone now, but I have one file-sized memorabilia box containing a few of her things, combined with a few items of my children’s. I have another memorabilia box of my own, and it contains anything I want to keep from the past. The memorabilia box limits what I can keep from the past, and I like it that way! As for my mother-in-law, she was very much like your friend, Clara. My MIL kept everything–she even bought nice items that would be in the house for relatives to take upon her death! Yes, she shopped for these things! She wanted her friends and family to remember her well, and they did. She was very generous and many more people attended her funeral than we expected. Even though she was very different from me, I love her and miss her every day! I miss my mother too!
Thank you to everybody for writing to share your personal stories. Life should not be about “stuff” but it so often has a lasting effect on us, doesn’t it, especially when we are left to dispose of all the things that others leave behind. I think one lesson I learned is to try and make the job easy for others by dealing with things that need sorting out now, rather than put it off too long. And in the process I am learning that I enjoy having less stuff around me. And the feeling of getting up-to-date and organized is wonderful. I do buy much less, and usually second hand, and try to have more experiences, rather than things. It doesn’t mean I don’t also enjoy a little shopping, or buying something new, but I am trying to be much more analytical about my purchases, and when something comes in to my house, I make sure to look for something that can go out!
I hear and sympathize with all of you who have had the burden of dealing with dead people’s stuff!
It has been six years since my pack rat father died and I am *still* sorting through stuff. 95% is/was junk…but I have found true treasures totally mixed in with the junk- like a card I sent him when I was six in my six-year-old handwriting, a letter he wrote to the pet store making arrangements to pick up our first puppy, letters home from *his* father during the war, a US Patent for a type of railway tie invested by my great-grandfather (I have no idea whether these ever got fabricated or used). These were Buried within boxes and boxes of *every bank statement*, *every gasoline credit card receipt*, *every sales receipt*, etc, duplicate show programs, duplicate photos..and two gazillion travel brochures going as far back as 1942…argh!
There are boxes and boxes of stuff I’ve thrown out because of mildew, bad stains, mouse droppings, etc. I’ve cleaned up after my mother and I know it won’t end until she dies. She is in a nursing home and at least she isn’t falling for more scams and get rich quick schemes. I decided long ago she was mentally ill but since she didn’t see it there was nothing we could do.
This resonates so deeply with me. My husband’s mother had inherited almost every possession of her parents. She crammed everything into an 800 square foot apartment, on top of all of her own stuff. She died unexpectedly in 2009 and we suddenly inherited ALL OF IT. We had to load up as much as we could move into our cars to take back to our 500 square foot apartment to go through. She was borderline hoarding. We threw out SO MUCH! She had printed seemingly every web page she’d visited in the two years prior and stacked them up on an antique writing desk, along with every piece of mail for the prior 5 years. She had a dining room the size of a small storage unit with a large china cabinet, a dresser storing office supplies, and a huge corner office desk. We kept the best dishes from the china cabinet and the writing desk and let the apartment management toss the rest in the dumpster. That’s what we had to do with every room. From her bedroom, all we kept was the vintage headboard. From the living room, we took the vintage coffee table and end tables (now in our living room, as they are beautiful hand carved wood). We emptied one closet and took everything back to our place – it was all stuff from her parents. But, before we could go through it, we moved 1,400 miles in 2010. We have 3 large boxes still in our garage, 5 years later, to go through. Most of it will likely get thrown away, but the hard part will be getting my husband to let go. We’ll only keep the nicest and most sentimental things, as I probably will be going through the majority of it by myself.
For Christmas I received 2 small gifts. First of all yay to reducing by another 3 gift exchanges this year! Both items were things I actually would have purchased myself so all in all I’m quite happy about the whole holiday gift experience for the first time EVER.
One of the items was that book “the life changing magic of tidying up”. If you haven’t heard of it just google it or the author Marie Kondo. I was skeptical but based on the endless raving about it I asked for it as a gift when pressed for a suggestion by someone who wouldn’t accept “I don’t want anything”. I read it cover to cover in one sitting, and despite my skepticism it’s frankly been life changing. The main take a way is that rather than declutter by deciding assessing each item to determine if you need it or can live without it, turn the process around. Keep only the very few items you love, or as she says those that spark joy. It makes you look at your stuff from a completely different perspective. Just like the goal of one, look at all your books, or clothes, or kitchen gear as one giant pile and pick out only the few things you love. EVERYTHING ELSE GOES. It’s a supremely efficient way to quickly and drastically cut down the accumulation and still keep the things that speak to your heart. Only after the massive reduction do you consider how to store the little that remains. Chances are excellent you’ll not only won’t need to buy any organizing containers, you’ll likely be getting rid of a lot of empty ones.
I continue to throw out and give away. I offer my mother new puzzle books if she’ll give me a few things to throw out or recycle. I have always been fascinated by the relationship of people and resources.
My mom died in 12/2016. There is no fighting. We are a little sad she was scammed out of so much money over the years, but it was her money. When I got my name on her bank account 2 years ago, I stopped a lot of the automatic withdrawals. She still gets letters about miracle cures and strange charities. The charities she had supported for years, that were legitimate, got checks. There was so much to throw out. Like your other readers, I try to get rid of as much as possible. No one will want my old clothes or shoes, or pots and pans I haven’t used in years. There are too many dishes and way too many craft supplies.