I had an epiphany a little while ago. And here it is: your kids don’t want your stuff!
Here is the background leading up to this revelation and the beginnings of my awareness about the value of senior minimalism (especially for other people – I came to it for myself a little later).
My mother went into a long term care residence at the age of 88. My daughter, Michele (Inspired Senior on Facebook) lived in the same area, and had been her primary caretaker when my mom was still in her home. I lived in New York City and would make the trip to the Kansas City area whenever I could. When Mom moved into The Groves, Michele and I had to empty out the house and get it ready for sale.
Mom was a bit of a hoarder and was actively involved in the small community where she lived. She wrote a newsletter and maintained the minute books for the Boards of Directors for two companies involved in running the community, and kept everything related to those responsibilities. She also kept files on projects that she wanted to work on at some point. And, there were lots of knickknacks from her trips with my father around the world, newspapers and magazines stacked high, boxes and boxes of papers for her various ideas, and an assortment of mismatched furniture, in addition to everything it takes to maintain a house without too much organization. Oh yes, and a full basement of furniture being stored there by various relatives. Not to mention the three bedrooms and my father’s office that had not been dealt with since his death 10 years before.
We went through everything, putting community papers aside so that they could keep what they wanted. And then tried to get rid of as much as we could while saving the things that we thought my sisters might want. My sisters were worried that Mom would be angry when she “got home” and were not convinced that the move was permanent, but they did eventually select some items (in one case, that was boxing up a lot of videos of movies from the TV). Mostly, my daughter and I were interested in the photos.
Two other people had “stuff” in the house: my father’s items in his “office” that had not been touched since his death, and my sister who lived half time with my mother and had boxed up her possessions 10 years before and brought them “home” with her, never having opened them in the intervening years.
We rented a storage pod where we put furniture and boxes of the items we had decided needed to be saved, including the boxes belonging to the sister that stayed there for half of each year. At this point, my sister stopped coming home except for short visits – usually when she came to see me in New York, and we would travel to Kansas City to see Mom. My daughter contacted a group that did estate sales to see if they could have some kind of yard sale, but the house was too remote to do an on-site sale. So the company purchased the contents of the house (minus a few things we had separated out). They agreed to remove everything from the house, including “trash” which they would dispose of AND write a small a check to us!!! Bargain!
Eventually, I spent a whole day with my sister going through her boxes in the storage unit. We numbered her boxes and listed the contents of each box and also did the same with Mom’s boxes. This was an excruciating process. Everything was left in storage, just reorganized. After a year or so, my mother went into skilled nursing, and more things were added to the storage space.
When my mother passed away, my daughter and I gave things from her stay in skilled nursing to people there who could use them and the rest migrated to the storage place. A mausoleum for stuff nobody wanted. Over time, we went through all of Mother’s boxes and dispensed with as much as we could in the way of furniture, books, papers and other items that make up a life. There were tears and wine.
And the kernel of resolve to make sure I didn’t leave the same situation for my two daughters, their spouses and children. The start of my adventure with the idea of minimalism, but not for my current life. Just an idea I had about the future.
We moved my sister’s material goods into a new storage space, near my daughter’s home. My sister paid for this storage herself from her meager income (mostly social security by this time). Although she only saw the items once in a while, they were still deemed too precious give or throw away. One of my last memories of my sister is of her spending an entire day with her “stuff” while the rest of the family spent time together.
Then, my sister died. She had colon cancer and had survived an operation and chemotherapy. I mean, we all hoped that she would be ok, but five years later the cancer was back. She also hoped that she would be ok, even as she headed into surgery. It was that old joke: the operation was a success, but the patient died. She didn’t leave a will or any instructions. Just boxes and boxes of stuff.
She died in late June. Anyone who has spent time in Kansas City knows that it can be very hot there in early July, and 2010 was no exception. Again, my daughter and I were faced with sorting through boxes containing her possessions – precious to her in her memory, but she didn’t even get to enjoy them because she was living overseas and the possessions were in a storage room many thousands of miles away.
This time, we took all the boxes to my daughter’s home to be sorted in the basement. Again with the tears and wine, at least the first day. Five days later, the tears were dried, except those cried in frustration about what to do with all this “stuff”! We even looked up the value of certain items to see if we could sell them, but in the end, anything that didn’t go to a family member or close friends was given or thrown away.
And I ended up with many of my mother’s objects that my sister had taken. I ended up with things from our childhood together (many of which I had long ago disposed of – year books from high school, for example).
I had never heard of minimalism at that point, but I knew someday I would have to address my own “stuff” (just not that day…).
Seniors – your kids don’t want your stuff!!!!
Soon – The Minimalists teach an old dog new tricks.