Sometimes I find myself holding on to memories . . .
that aren’t even mine.
People give me stuff. They don’t want these things in their own homes, but they hate to throw them away or donate their special items to an unknown-possibly-non-appreciative stranger.
So they give it to me. They know how much I love a good story. They know how my eyes light up over interesting or sentimental things. They figure my house is junky anyway . . .
But usually, these things that sound so interesting . . . have no place in my home either. Even less of a place than they once had in the giver’s home.
While they bought or once used the item, I never knew I needed it until it was offered to me.
When I cleaned out the garage recently, I found several such treasures. I’m highlighting one that was given to me by my mother. (The others might incriminate me in front of people who happen to read the blog and thought they did me a favor by unloading their stuff on me.)
I’m not blaming my well-meaning friends. I accepted these items, even delighted in the idea of them.
But once I find them forgotten in the garage, I can’t let someone else’s memory be what makes me keep them. I have enough of my own memory-laden-clutter to deal with.
The picture above is of a silverware box. It’s nice and all, but I don’t have any fancy silverware.
Like, at all.
My husband is excited if there are five clean forks at suppertime. (And that’s with running the dishwasher every night.)
Even if I did magically receive fancy silverware, I don’t know where in the world I’d put this rather large box.
But the box has a story. My mother found it in an antique store, and examined the partial-sticker on it.
The evidence sticker. As in, this was once part of an investigation of some sort. Perhaps it contained priceless pieces that were taken in a robbery. Perhaps it held the defining clue to a real mystery.
I love drama.
It was tempting. But I didn’t experience the joy of this antique-store-find. I didn’t have any relationship with the people who could tell an interesting story about this silverware box.
It’s someone else’s memory.
I have enough trouble dealing with my own memories. I can’t handle theirs too.
When the guilt of the memory-keeping-responsibility weighs heavily on me and makes me question my decision to get rid of something, I remind myself that . . . they didn’t want it in their own home.
So I don’t need to feel guilty about purging it from mine.
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I’m linking this up over at Raising Homemakers for her Homemaking Link-Up.
What a great post!
My MIL has the same sort of fascination / attachment to stuff.This was so-and-so's great aunts 50th wedding anniversary card.
I may love you for this post!!!! Isn't the guilt of letting someone else's stuff awful!!! I have the same problem. when I decluttered during spring break, i'd say 50% of stuff I got rid of wasn't even mine! It was given to me and I knew I didn't need/want it when i accepted it but I couldn't say No. It came with a "I used this, got this, won this…and I want you to have it" How do you turn that down? No I have plenty of my own crap, I don't want your!?! Anyway, I have come to terms with the same thing…they didn't want it and should not fault me for not being able to keep it either. Now that i've learned how to let the stuff go, I need to learn to get over the feeling bad for it part *(sigh)* 🙂
I love a good story. And I picture myself walking around my house telling these stories to people who are truly interested in what I have to say. The problem is those items are stuffed out-of-sight. And it would take hours to dig them out. Not much fun for my guests. Oh, well. Guess I will write the stories for my children.
Always so good to know I'm not alone!
Shannon, I laughed aloud about picturing yourself walking around telling these great stories. That is so me!
Although I love getting blessed by people giving me stuff, it's the biggest reason why I have so much junk.
My sister and I had a good laugh recently. She was holding on to o ur (deceased) dad's army jacket. She finally decided to ask our mom if it was OK to get rid of it. When she asked her about it, my mom informed her that my dad didn't have an army jacket! It's gone now…
That is funny…. My dad was a four-year veteran of WWII, he was in North Africa for 2 years, and then made his way through France, Italy and Germany the during the rest of it. He had a fairly dangerous job, too. But when he came home, his uniform was hidden away in my mother’s cedar chest, and never taken out, tried on or talked about again. The only war stories I ever heard were the funny ones about him and his buddies. I have a vague memory of seeing his uniform as a child. Later, it vanished… my mother always cleaned out used clothes and items and gave them to the church rummage sales, no matter who they belonged to or what personal value they had … if she didn’t want it around, it was gone. I don’t know if dad had anything to say about it or not, since he generally wasn’t consulted about such trivia. Mom had long since gotten rid of her wartime wedding suit as well… she had absolutely NO sentimentality about any of it…. she was convinced they had that stupid war mainly to louse up her newly married existence!
My mom was a depression-era baby, who recycled EVERYTHING. She took my dad’s wool dress blues from his days in the Air Force and used them to make a snowsuit for me when I was a toddler (I’m 56 now). She never let anything to to waste. When she passed, my sister and I found boxes and boxes and BOXES of fabric, ribbons, buttons, wrapping paper, boxes (yes, boxes of boxes), etc. in the attic. Some of it was so old it was dry-rotted.
I've been reading regularly for a couple of weeks now (found you through Mama's Laundry Talk), and I'm finally commenting to let you know that I fight with the 'memories monster' every. single. time I try to declutter. I was working on boxes of 'stuff' on Monday – getting mad at my Mom for holding on to my 4th grade papers for so many years and then giving them to ME to go through. Here's hoping that 1) I end up with a house we love to live in and 2) my kids never get mad at me for burdening them with MY memories.
I am totally guilty of this! I've found 2 effective ways to help me deal with it:
-Call my husband in, tell him why it's special to me (or was to someone else lol) and then toss/donate it
-If it's really tempting to keep (my son's binky's for instance) I take a picture and then toss/donate.
I love your blog! So glad I found it through Simple Mom.
That is what I do! It’s so freeing! I find that I don’t miss such and such as much as I thought I might.
I understand how you feel. There was a time when all we had were things that others didn't want and I hated all of it. Many times relatives thought because we had nothing in our home that their junk would be a great place to be rid of unwanted stuff. It's amazing how time changes everything. Now it's me asking my kids if they would like to take some of my things. Loved your post today. Hugs….
My first thought when I saw the box was oh boy,that would make a great jewelery box.This is part of the reason my house resembles a dumping ground for things other people don't want.I'm making progress though because I took a bag of stuff to the thrift store for Moma without looking in it or going in the store. There may be hope for me yet.
That was a pretty awesome find though!
Um…an evidence sticker is a spec-tac-ul-ar find, however, now your putting it back out there in the world for someone else to delight over. Good for you.
Wow!! Loved your post…. yes, yes, YES!!! That is exactly what happens alot in my house! My mother will say "Oh, I have this bag of stuff that I'm going to bring up & you can go through… blah, blah, blah"…. I make a point of trying to beat her to the punch…. I get to her house BEFORE she brings it to mine…. I go through it, really looking at stuff & making sure it's not something that I want (I mean… look at this stuff, it's in great shape! Some of this stuff is NEW!!! And it's all FREE!!!!!…. – mmmhhhmmmmm, yep, I know you're thinking those same thoughts)… I have been very 'good' in recent months at taking very little – only what I know I've been seriously needing, looking for or wanting…. not just because it's FREEEEEEEEE!!!!! lol
I am reallllly trying to learn to say NO. No to over excerting myself, No to extra "stuff", No to stuff I'm just going to drop in the dumpster on the way out of my Mom's neighborhood. guilt, guilt, guilt. ugh.
Ha! I *almost* bought one just like this last week at a thrift store… but realized as cool as it looked, I didn't really NEED it.
We are so kindred, you and me. I can't tell you how many things are in my house because they aren't mine and I just can't bear to throw them away. I think it's a sickness.
I read Peter Walsh's book called "It's All Too Much" and his take on that kind of thing was that if they wanted it, they should've kept it. Obviously, if it's in my house, the original owner doesn't want or need it, and I should feel okay getting rid of it. So, I have.
Mostly. 😉
I read another helpful philosophy from Peter Walsh. I can’t repeat it verbatim, but what I took away was that I need to work on my Vision for my life and home first. Then, when confronting the decision to declutter an item, ask “How does this fit into your Vision?”
I decided the home I would like to have could be described by the word “streamlined.” This is my Vision. A streamlined home that makes life easy for me to keep up with. So I would like a lot less stuff, easier to clean around. Another part of my Vision is “MY taste.” Not the previous generation’s taste, which is too ornate for me. And functional — functionality matters a great deal to me, and I am finding if something doesn’t have storage in it, it’s debatable if it’s functional for my house.
As items are offered, I’m asking myself, “How does this fit into my Vision for my home?”
My grandmother’s Victorian carved rose loveseat doesn’t actually fit into MY Space. (And besides, it would have to be reupholstered and refinished somewhat before it’s useful. Work.) It needs a home. I absolutely LOVED my great grandmother’s trestle sideboard but it is too long and does not have storage under it. It’s nonfunctional and I just can’t afford the floor space for it. I’ve given siblings an opportunity at the pieces that do not fit all criteria. My sister was ecstatic to have the trestle table in her dining room and I visit it when there. I haven’t offered the loveseat — she does not need another refurbishing burden imo. I hope to get the courage to declutter it without guilt. Oh yes, and the various wedding presents. Most of those people are dead now! lol
Oh, this really hits home. I have tons of my own "memory stuff" (mostly my kids' stuff) but ever since my parents moved out of the house I grew up in (5 years ago) and my mother-in-law moved out of the house my husband grew up in (um, longer than that), I have all of THEIR stuff as well.
My m-i-l's stuff stayed in our garage for several years, in unopened boxes, before I realized that not only did my husband not know we had any of it, but even my m-i-l did not seem to remember what "treasures" she had given us. So I called the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore and scheduled a truck pick-up which of course meant I had to actually figure out what to give them, and it was a lot. Easy peasy once I made myself do it.
But what's left now is boxes and bags of letters and photos (my parents' house was the repository of ALL of that stuff from both of THEIR parents' homes, so I have several generations' worth). It's so hard to know what to do with them — I'm not too sentimental about knick-knack type things, but really sentimental about letters and pictures. It's a long, hard process!
Letters and pictures, especially from family history can be very precious. And cluttery. I have had to learn that a scanner is my friend.
Also look into your local preservation society. They love old photos, especially if you know anything about them. Of course, you’d have to surrender the originals to be stored in controlled environments, but you might talk them into giving you scans.
Thank you for the encouragement!
Our home became the repository of my f-i-l household stuff and my brothers stuff in 2010. In 2013 we inherited my m-i-l household stuff. In between my parents and my sister have gifted us with many “useful” items, sometimes when we weren’t even home!
Since my daughters graduation from college in June, we have been weeding through everything to go into a garage sale labor day weekend. Anything not sold will be donated to Goodwill approx an hour after the sale is over.
BUT…. letters and pictures. M-I-L started scrapbooks of these items to go with the family history book she wrote nearly 20 years ago. Those are going to be a challenge.
New Mantra: Not MY memories, Bye-Bye!
I actually tied a ribbon on my son’s binkie and use it as a Christmas tree decoration.
Love this idea!
Oh, my. We are clearing my mom’s attic (now that my sis has time to help!) and I’m running into the same thing – “Do you want this? It was your great-grandmother’s and it’s an antique…” Well, what do you say to that? I can’t just say, “No, why don’t we toss it” because it’s a beautiful ceramic pitcher, and it has been passed down all these years, and mom kept it for some reason (unknown to me, she can’t even tell me except that it’s important). Oy. If I wasn’t feeling guilty enough, she gets this look in her eye and says, “Well, you could always look it up on eBay and sell it, make some money…” like it would hurt her to do so. I can’t win. 🙁
“Well, what do you say to that? I can’t just say, “No, why don’t we toss it” because it’s a beautiful ceramic pitcher, and it has been passed down all these years, and mom kept it for some reason (unknown to me, she can’t even tell me except that it’s important).”
I’ve had the same emotional problem, and sometimes I still have. Andrew Mellen has a very refreshing perspective on such items: They are the things that are still there (and maybe even given to you) because people before you did not manage to declutter them. That’s a game changer, isn’t it? So I take it upon me to break this vicious clutter cycle. 🙂
Uuuugggghhh…… the stuff my mother in law gives me. And simultaneously voicing concern we have too much clutter. The latest…..a copper bucket sitting in our garage…. And my husband is a sucker for other people’s clutter(that pot is antique!!!!! And I might use it one day!!!). One day we literally threw down over some stuff his sister had unloaded on us and he told me I was ungrateful for getting so mad about it! We have so much clutter of our own, it just sent me over the edge. :-/ Thankfully, he is doing better at saying no for us….to most stuff….except the copper pot, of course! 😉
I’m in the same boat as several of the above people have mentioned. I’m the only daughter (I have three brothers), plus my husband was the only child, so everything of his parents’ belongings, and most of the household stuff of my parents end up with me. And I’m grateful to have antiques and treasures of our ancestors. But, I now have three cedar chests, 4 sets of silverware, 6 sets of dishes, 3 wedding dresses, etc., and the list goes on and on. It’s very difficult to part with the really nice things. I’ve sold many items on garage sales, and have donated many bags to different organizations that come around in trucks to pick up stuff. I guess for me, it’s a process – I let go of a little more each year that passes by. Thanks for your encouragement.
I am a pitcher and chucker by nature, but also love the provenance of items. Save the story! Take the photo you have here, and write (or have your mom write) the story, and one day you can toss that photo and note into an album. Done.
Yes- other peoples stuff. Sometimes a blessing, many times a burden. After I was newly married, my obnoxious FIL who won’t take no for an answer decided we needed a box of outast coffee mugs that my MIL told him to take to the donation spot. Did he do that? NO- he forced them upon us. FYI- my husband doesn’t even drink coffee and I had a few mugs I had gathered on trips. At that point I felt obligated to take them- he brought them in, placed them the floor. We lived in a teensy tiny house with very small galley kitchen and very little cupboards. They stayed in their box at the end of a hallway where they were placed, except one day I tripped and accidently kicked the box. It was very cathartic. I then made a point of tripping and kicking that box every.single.time I passed it. 😀 Should I have been a good girl and just donated it myself? Probably, but dang that felt so good. I put my foot down (no pun intended)on anything else he tried to force on us… and believe me he tried. I’m not ashamed, not one bit.
We move every two years, and for some reason, seem to be getting in smaller and smaller homes with each move! With two kids now, I’ve gotten really good at saying no – goodness, we have more that we need to have with their stuff and the weight limits we have to stay within. I’ve even gotten to the point where I actually say – “PLEASE don’t give us that stuff.” It just turns into another THING that we have to pack and unpack and find a place for and all that nonsense. It just starts to represent STRESS for me. This past weekend a friend tried to give me diapers – my kids have been potty trained for years – because “maybe YOU know someone who will use them. !!!!! I will tell them, “We really don’t need it, please give it to someone who does.” I have no problem saying no, but I really do hate the guilt trips I get because I did say it! You wouldn’t believe the attitudes I get when I say no! 🙂
I have a few of those items *smh* but then I also have many that I picked up myself. lol I have a few projects I need to do and no basement or garage to d them in so I guess the laundry room is going to “take one for the team” so to speak. lol
P.S. If there s anyway you can do something about the AD’s on your site it would be appreciated. I know that sometimes there’s nothing you can do. However, the one I got right at the top right for “League of Angles” was pretty pornographic in nature and I’m glad my kids and my husband couldn’t see my screen.
Ack! Thanks for letting me know. I’ve blocked all ads for that type of category, but some slip through!
brilliant post. I have a terrible inability to saying no, and its landed me with endless amounts of crap and clutter that people think I want… its awful..my neighbours are the worst for it. i’m also terrible when it comes to kids clothes. I hoard them because I cant bear to part with them for either memory reasons, or ‘just in case’ most of the just in case clothes are hand me downs and will never ever be worn! ridiculous! I just cant say no!
Thank you for this post.
We are moving soon and have been going through stuff to pack, throw away etc. Many times so far I have come across things I was given mainly by family in the thought that I would like them. I love that you say, I don’t have to hold on to someone else’s memory! That is such a freeing thing! Thank you and here’s to a less cluttered more organized 2014!
I struggle with this so much. I have so many things that I don’t use or love just because they belonged to someone in my family. I worry too much about hurting my loved ones’ feelings if I get rid of or refuse to accept things that they want me to have.
Wonderful post! Just wanted to mention that that same awful pornographic game has showed up 2ce when I loaded your page, the 2nd time today. I immediately refreshed and got something innocuous, but just wanted you to know it is still a problem. I don’t know if you can DO anything. It is very offensive that they would show something like that on a blog page, ugh!!!! Please people, there are children and husbands (and wives!) who don’t need to be exposed to that stuff. (And I’m not blaming you, please know that.)
Thank you! I just saw some people in a blogging group mention this ad and give the url so we can block it! I’ll go do that now!
My mom tries to give me things each and every time I visit. Nice things, pretty things, sometimes even expensive things. I just don’t have the room for any more ‘things’. I have simply started holding my hand up and saying ‘No, Mom. There’s no more room at the inn. But thank you anyway.’ 🙂
I used to feel guilty and take other people’s stuff. I believe their hearts were in the right place, but I have enough going on in my life that I don’t need the stress. We don’t don’t have curbside pickup for donations in my area. I have to load it all in my van, drive it to the donation location, and unload it. Basically I was just the ‘middleman.’ So I have no problem saying no these days. I still have too much of my own stuff to get rid of. I don’t need to be hauling castoffs from anyone else along with the things I’m kicking out of my house. 🙂
I have this problem. But lately I’ve been thinking that if someone GIVES it to me, they are relinquishing all rights to its existence. I, therefore, am free to do with it what I will. One day I will explain this to that certain relative who loves to bless me with her junk 🙂
Yep. You get it!
THANK YOU!!! My elderly father remarried soon after my mom died 15 years ago. The new wife doesn’t like to keep memories, and they have sold their (her) house to relocate. After his guarding of our former family memories and extremely sentimental items (which he still holds on to), he unloaded boxes of c.r.a.p. on my brother and I. Boxes and boxes of undated/un-named photos, cards from my own baby shower (50+ yrs ago, from people I don’t even know), and on and on it goes. CRAP. Awards HE got…. and guess what? I feel compelled to go thru each box, because there have been some treasures I found…. like some ancestry info that is priceless, my mom’s baptism certificate, her wedding slippers…. but what a crappy thing to do – just dump boxes of dusty random crap on your kids (and I’m trying to downsize my own home and purge like a madwoman). His wife asked me a few weeks after they had unloaded this on us, if I had had a chance to go through it all, to which I replied “not yet”… (I work full-time like most of the world & have health issues on top)… and she actually snickered… then snorted “oh, it’s a mess”. I wanted to sling my enchilada at her. (Don’t worry – I didn’t)…. So purge on, people. I felt NO remorse at putting those photos of people I didn’t know, blurry photos, relatives I didn’t/don’t care for, and cards from unknown givers (to name a few) into the recycle bin. Those things won’t bring back my mom, or restore family relationship. But the freedom I got from getting just one more box OUT of my house and out of my life was priceless. Steady on and be Blessed!
So glad I saw this. We are preparing for a move and we’ve been going through stuff, stuff, and more stuff! And I’ve had the issue of, “But this was so and so’s… I really shouldn’t just toss it out.” Now I feel like unless I truly love it, it needs to go. And that is usually my mantra. Simply because most of the time I think, why hold onto this if I don’t love it when someone else out there might? This is another thing to add to my personal arsenal against my wanna be hoarder brain! Thanks for the ‘AH HA!’
Hmmm… somehow I managed to walk out of my mom’s house last weekend with an entire trash bag full of baby bottles and a paper sack full of baby clothes hangers. You just gave me the permission I needed to throw both away without even looking inside them.
This conversation was like a breath of fresh air for me! We are emptying my family home, 60+ years’ worth of STUFF, including treasures and antiques. I don’t have room or the desire to keep 90% of it, but there was the GUILT attached to letting it go. It was refreshing to realize I’m not alone, and to embrace the concept of “other people’s memories”. My old mantra was “If in doubt, throw it OUT!”, and my new one is “Not my memory”.
I’m very sentimental and have a hard time getting rid of stuff. And if there’s something I like to collect, I also go overboard. (Like the nativity collection I’ve accumulated, love, and don’t have room to display. I lucked out there – someone built a storage box (lockable) for me in the church attic, where they live 11 months of the year. The other month they go to a large display case near the church multipurpose room and LOTS of people, including our preschool kids, get to enjoy them. One little boy stood there in awe first time he saw it and said, “Miss Dawn, there’s THIRTY-FIVE Baby Jesuses in there!!! There are way more now, LOL! I have told my cousin Carol that when I die, they are hers. She’s a lot younger than I am. My boys won’t want them. And she’ll be happy to continue to share them with our church – she’s happy about this, thank goodness.) But I digress. One of the hardest things for me was when my Mom died and my brothers and I had to immediately move her stuff out of her assisted living apartment. She’d already downsized a lot through a move from our family home and then when moving to assisting living. I had moved just 3 months before and still wasn’t done unpacking. It was Christmas time and all this STUFF came into my house. Stuff I mostly wanted but also felt I should take (I did get all the very old family photos, which were labeled!!). They took on this aura of sacredness, for lack of a better word, since Mom had died and how could I get rid of her stuff?? I’d never heard of this problem before; loved one has died and their stuff becomes “sacred”. Not quite the right word, but it explains how I felt. She even would have said a lot of it isn’t all that sentimental, you don’t have to keep it. It’s been nearly 10 years now, and I’ve finally reached a point where I really need to seriously declutter and streamline and am even able to start letting go of stuff.. I may need to move again myself in a few years to a 1 story house, plus I don’t want to saddle my kids with all this.
I have experienced the same whenever a relative had passed away. Somehow even their mundane stuff became sacred. I’ve recluttered our home thrice, and while I am very capable of doing it again, I really don’t want to.
I’ve turned this sacredness burden into an additional motivation to toss something. When in doubt, I better get rid of something whilst that person it reminds me of is still alive. Admittedly, it’s a bit morbid, but it works, especially for all those people at my home who are so very alive and need space to breathe and be. 🙂
When mother had to downsize to a small apartment, she gave me a lot of her things. Although I had room for all of it, my husband nagged me to go through the boxes and get rid of things, like ugly glassware from the ’70’s. I haven’t missed any of it. But there are some things that can’t be thrown away, like the handmade silverware box that my grandfather made. At least it isn’t all that big. It isn’t that my mother didn’t want it–actually, it isn’t even mine, I am just holding on to it for her until that day that probably won’t come, that she will have room for it. I love that I have an “heirloom” and that it can’t be eaten (my great-grandmother’s wedding ring– don’t ask), so I am not complaining about this one item. It is when you have too many such items that it seems to become a problem.
My grandmother gave me an enormous framed box of my father’s hand-knit baby blanket and his silver comb set. Even she was overwhelmed by how big the project turned out (she had it professionally done). She asked me beforehand if I would like this. I didn’t know it would be practically the size of Mt. Everest. I live in a 1980’s place, award-winning for innovative architecture. What that means is that somehow I have very little actual wall-space. It’s all high ceilings and windows. The framed sentimental items are my garage at the moment.
At a young age, my mother would hound me into getting rid of toys that I was not playing with, so I think this conditioned me to let go of my things. I periodically go through my family’s things and ruthlessly donate items. (My problem is clutter–I am definitely one of those people with Slob-o-Vision). The problem is that I am married to one of those “don’t throw out my 20+ year-old t-shirt collection” men. If he spends money on it, he doesn’t like to get rid of it. I did convince him to part with the rest of his ’80’s clothes. I hope some teens are enjoying his rad vintage clothes.
So this brings me to my son, the toy hoarder. He has autism, so I can’t just hand him a Hefty bag and ask him to put unwanted toys in the bag. He wants everything. Ugh. One year I got rid of his dancing BooBah’s c. 2001. He whined incessantly, “purple present BoohBah!” until I had to go on eBay to find these discontinued toys. In every color. That is the last time! The last time!!
Lord help us. Same here. I have a really pretty bedroom in my basement with a wall to wall fireplace with a built up area on the front covered with old neat slate. I can’t see the slate, nor can I use the fireplace because boxes and huge boxes from my mother’s home are stacked up there. I am not sure what is in the boxes because I won’t even take a peek. Mother died eleven years ago and the big plastic bag of things we packed up from off her table by her favorite chair and etc., is still sitting down there…I know it should just be junked but…some boxes are in the back of a three car garage and i know mice run around there so am AFRAID to look in those boxes. I am now 76 and hate to leave this on my kids who haven’t a sentimental bone in any of their bodies. I am getting to the point of just sending those boxes along on a thrift truck yet something also tells me they might be full of treasures. I think I am a very sick woman. Hoping to work on all this come warm weather and glad to see I am not the only freakazoid out there.
My husband and I don’t have children. Somehow we have wound up with all the deceased relatives’ memory items. We have a HUGE old hope chest (very ornate) full of photos. My husband is just getting over a major illness and still isn’t 100%. I told him we are going to sit down and go through the photos and divide them up. His cousin Michael is getting all photos of his parents, cousin Karen is getting all photos of her parents, etc. if they want the photos, great. If they don’t, they can trash them and I don’t have to feel guilty about it. When we die, my niece is going to toss it all anyway.
We were moving. I had THREE huge under-the-bed boxes filled with items from my daughter’s childhood that were sentimental to ME. I asked her to go through them and select those things worth saving. At first she was puzzled. What did any of this stuff mean? What did it even have to do with her? She didn’t remember most of it. The sad thing was, neither did I, until I laid my eyes upon them. Seeing these things brought back a flood of memories. And suddenly, I couldn’t part with them. I felt the tug to “keep” creep back into my mind. Finally, after about ten minutes of explaining things to her, I had to close the first box. “Honey,” I told her, “Just go through these. Save anything you think might be worth saving, and throw the rest out. Just don’t tell me what you trash. That way I won’t feel the loss of it!” Yes, it might have been a good history lesson for her, or even a bonding time for us. But it would have also been an extra burden to place on her. Giving her another reason to hoard and save, or a guilt trip to keep things I think have value. Instead, another corner of my brain was clear. And she – now a missionary who lives out of two suitcases – would not be laden with stuff that has no true use. What a gift!
Another story. Every year, at least 50 people send us photo Christmas cards. I tape them to ribbons and hang them from the door in my laundry room. But at the end of the year, when the new batch comes, I can’t seem to part with them. I love to save them and look back over them, just to see how our friends’ kids have grown through the years, etc. But I’ve been saving them -all of them – for all 29 years of our marriage. Do you know how many boxes 29 years of photos take up? This year, after addressing the hoarder in me, I had an idea. I set out the cards on my kitchen table and took pictures of them with my iPhone. I filed them on my computer, under the previous year, and threw the hard copies in the trash. Freedom!
Thanks Nony for inspiring so many of us to loose our ties to the passing things of this world!
Alright Nony and others I am looking for help. I have a MIL that is somewhat of a hoarder and EVERYTHING has sentimental value. She (very ceremoniously) gave each of us daughters in law old items that belonged to our husbands great aunts after they passed away. I have a bag full of old thin hand towels and scrub-looking apron, 2 paper thin handkerchiefs, a spoon from a silver set, and a cup from a set that my MIL loved when she was little. She attaches sentiment to every little thing and has passed this lovely hoarding mentality to my husband. He won’t let me get rid of it (although I made the mistake of talking with him about it because he probably would have forgotten about it) and our storage room is already full of “valuable stuff” that has no sentimental value to me, and in this case him either! Any advise when you are married to the person who hasn’t yet learned (or is unwilling) to let go of someone else’s memories?
One of Nony’s rules is don’t start with the hard stuff. Start with the easy stuff, and start with your stuff. Go through your clothes, jewelry, makeup, hair stuff, kitchen stuff (if you are in charge of the kitchen), junk drawers, books, movies, etc.
Once your husband can see/feel the change, hopefully you can take baby steps on the sentimental stuff. If not, at least you can enjoy your spaces clutter-free.
My brother, sil, and I cleaned out my parents home after they both died. My sil is great at ‘no thank you, I don’t need it’, while I fell into the ‘but it’s mom’s…’. Boxes and boxes landed in my garage where they sat for THREE YEARS, while my car sat in the driveway! Then we had several days of sub freezing weather, capped with below zero (that doesn’t happen often in Georgia.) A pipe broke, of course, the garage flooded, of course, and the boxes were disgusting. Off to the dump they went, and I have the garage back! I have no idea what was in most of them, but if I didn’t need it in three years I don’t need it now. Freedom! Now if someone would go through the storage room (aka the junk room!)…
Never, ever, EVER treat family photos and letters like “someone else’s memories”. If you have children, photos are part of your children’s heritage. If you have no children (or if you adopted children, who have their own ancestry separate from yours), you may have nieces or nephews, and that’s part of their heritage. If nothing else you have cousins and that’s part of THEIR heritage. One way or another, those photos and letters do not only belong to you.
Learn how to preserve photos properly. There are two major schools of thought in this regard, one having to do with the preservation of physical memorabilia and the other having to do with digital asset management. Never scan a photo and then throw the photo away; that’s like destroying a photo and then losing the negative. Digital files do NOT last forever and neither do the media they’re stored upon. Digital is good for backup, but only if you maintain it. Paper media need to be treated with care–do NOT leave them in a hot attic or garage, or in a damp basement. If it would destroy a book it would destroy a photo. Let your photos live where you do.
Seriously. There are so many other things a slob needs to declutter, don’t pick on the things you actually should keep. Even if you can’t identify the person(s) in the photo, someone will be able to at some point, especially with the advent of social media. And don’t think of this as an extra burden. Think of it as ordinary life maintenance, in the same category as cleaning your house or changing the oil in your car or shepherding your child’s K-12 education.
Yes I agree with the poster saying to keep old photos & letters. My parents sold their home of 50+ years & I got the family photos since my siblings don’t care. I also found 2 boxes of letters in my parents attic from my grandmother’s house – she died in 1982! I bought a few large archival quality binders with slipcases to keep out dust. I bought a lot of clear storage pages too. I sorted the letters, first by year, then by month. I opened the letters and placed them in chronological order in the binders. So now they are like a book, easy to flip through & read. I did it while watching tv. It only took a few hours total. This Xmas my nieces LOVED going through the binders, reading family letters. It brought history to life. My dad has Alzheimer’s & is pretty quiet these days but he perked up at the letters and enjoyed talking about them, explaining back stories to us. Please don’t throw away letters. Pass them on to another family member or donate them to a historical society!
Not all photos need to be kept. I’ve been going through boxes and boxes of photos from my parents. All unlabeled. My sisters don’t know who those people are and we don’t care. I’m not going to save photos because they might it might not be ancestors. That’s not my kids heritage.
Noooooope. Not gonna do that. Any of that. 😀 Ever! The sad fact is most peoples lives are uneventful-a few people might care, and they enjoy archiving and reading stories and entertaining the family with them. But I’m certainly not going to be guilted into doing this because people who don’t live in my house think I ought to. If it means that much, then the person it matters to should take on the responsibility for doing it. If no one cares then there’s no real point.
What about a memory that was inherited and not given to you? My mom passed away when I was 19. I’m 30 now and still have a majority of her things. She spent about 6 years in the army, traveling all over the US and Europe. It was just my mom and I while I was growing up, and there are a lot of questions I will never be able to ask her. I feel like keeping these items are keeping memories she was never able to share with me, but I also have nowhere to keep them and no long-term use for them. Worse, I’m single now, but what about when I get married? And if I end up keeping all this stuff, what are my poor children going to do with it?
It was always hard for me to get rid of things that other people gave me, whether I wanted them or not, but getting rid of things that used to belong to my mom, or my grandma (or things either of them made, like clothing, and my grandma was a very talented artist and did many paintings and carvings) is proving to be nearly impossible, especially since I don’t have any siblings to help me make these decisions.
Keep your mother‘s belongings and store them in one place. From time to time, go through them, and if you are ready to part with some, you‘ll feel it in your heart of hearts. If you are not ready, hold on to them. I am very sorry for your loss, especially at such a young age, being the only one left. Maybe you need to keep many things for now, until you have found somebody to share the stories with, i.e. siginificant other and maybe even children.
If at some point you want to give away everything, I guess that is okay, too. To me, your situation seems difficult enough as it is, do not accept responsibilities that strangers want to load onto you, with respect to your mother‘s belongings.
I’ll TRY to avoid hyperbole by not saying that this is the bane of my existence…but this is definitely a thorn in my side. My husbands side of the family (both his mom’s and dad’s!) loves to ceremoniously give random little items to their children, spouses and grandchildren with a story that goes with them about great aunt so and so, or great grandpa, etc. I have a single spoon from a silver set that was split 48 ways, a glass that grandma loved to drink out of as a child that she battled her cousin to get at the estate meeting, a very old outdated apron, a ragged hand towel, random clip on jewelry, and so forth. It’s getting worse and I’m not allowed to give it away, I’ll be breaking up the family!!! (Sister-in-law’s words) It’s driving me mad, and I’m throwing away extra stuff of mine to make space for these random items that I don’t remember the story on (seriously, there are over 2 dozen stories at this point that I should remember about people I didn’t know existed) . I can’t stand it.
Ask your sister in law if she wants to keep it then. She can have two random spins! Don’t feel filtered into keeping these things. Order them to others and if they don’t want them, let them go!
This made me laugh and laugh…the silverware box. When my grandparents were still living, they told me I was to have their special silverware box containing a set of silverware that had their engraved initial on each piece. I was married and had the same initial as that silverware. It was given to my grandfather by his father, who bought it for his wife. Now, the good (and very sad) part: my grandfather’s father treated his wife horribly (I hear), and the relationship ended in a horrible way (I hear). Gulp. But I have this beautiful silverware in a beautiful box hidden deep in the bowels of my storage area. I can’t display it because if we were ever robbed, it is pretty much the only thing of value in our house (four kids will do your house in, too). Yet I keep it because I promised my lovely grandfather that I would. It was special to him, so it is special to me. But dang, I feel like you were peeking into my life!! 😊
If it’s hidden away in your house, what good is it doing? If it’s out, you can enjoy it. If you got robbed, what is the difference between it being gone out being lost in your basement never to be seen?
Please don’t toss old letters. I now have my grandfather’s letters to my grandmother, 1916-1920, the year they got married. They were still tied with a pink ribbon. No one in my family ever mentioned these letters. I think they were long forgotten. But he wrote about WW1 and the Navy, being sick with influenza of 1919, the impact of the flu in small towns, peace negotiations, his dreams of the future. They are a treasure !!! Those letters have been stored in boxes and moved for a century.
Old letters and documents are the most valuable part of family history, and the most easily disposed.
They are in archival boxes now.
Letters can be donated to a local county historical organization to or a nearby university.
To me, this feels too personal. I would not give away letters or photos without knowing that my ancestors agreed to share them. For some relatives,we know that they‘ve agreed, for others, we don’t. And yes, they‘ve lived interesting, sad, and incredibly joyful lives (in occupied Europe during WW 2, and some in occupying Europe during those years), but still I cannot share their personal letters.
I don’t donate to historical societies either. When i called out asking if they wanted them, they begged me not to bring them. They said they will be stored in boxes never to be seen again and they don’t have the room. Unless it’s something that is very significant to history that has never been known before, it’s useless to them.
When my mother passed away five years ago, I had one month to empty her apartment. I was busy homeschooling 2 teens at the time and leading our 4H group, so no time to dither. My mantra was “it meant something to her, but it doesn’t mean anything to me.” Then I’d toss it in the trash or Goodwill pile. I still came home with lots of boxes of family history–pictures, yearbooks, recipe files, etc. that didn’t make the first cut. I’ve been going thru them lately and tossing almost all of it. I take pictures or scan the stuff that seems meaningful, but it has to go. My kids, both boys, won’t want any of it and their wives won’t either. It helps me to think about keeping them from resenting me for having to deal with the stuff I wouldn’t deal with.
In reading about people gifting things to other people, my dad was the opposite. My mom kept a lot of clutter. My dad told me for gifts he did not want anything that he could not eat, experience or give away. I respected that as I had a tough time with my mom’s clutter, too. So I gave him yummy, sometimes healthy food, although sometimes got him his favorite treats or spent time with him doing a fun activity, and gave him a great card and a music CD he would enjoy and that took up very little space. He appreciated that. I give gifts that I know the receiver can use that they will enjoy looking at and using. I do not want to add to anyone else’s clutter situation. I have clutter issues, too. While I do not bring a lot of things into my own home because I do not want to have to deal with more things taking up space, I have a difficult time getting rid of things that accumulated over the last 40 years.
I took all of the silverware out of it’s lovely wooden box and gave the silverware to someone who actually uses fancy silverware….but I kept the box. It was perfect, with all of it’s slots, to store my scissors, shears, seam rippers, seam gauges and other tools that I use in my sewing and crafting. It sits open so I can see all of my tools of that sort at a glance and easily grab the one that I need and just as easily return it to it’s proper place.
I have a hard time when my mom is getting rid of stuff that I made for her as a kid/teenager. To me these should be precious memories but she sees them all as junk. I’ve saved most of them, but I’m not sure what to do with them now because I have my own kid’s memory items. I can’t really pass them on as they are personalized, but I remember the work and love I put into them so I’m struggling to let them go. Not just drawings but items I have sewn or stitched together, tapistry for the wall, etc. Any suggestions?
Maybe put them in memory boxes you can display on Mother’s Day or some other special day!
This is an unbelievably helpful thought. I can’t say thank you enough. When I read your blog, I’m pretty sure we were twins separated at birth. I have a huge problem with this and you just gave me the tool I have been needing to sort through objectively!!! Thank you!
Thanks for your tips and techniques! I am having success at decluttering things by taking photos and making an album with stories. I keep old family pieces by the same rule I’m using for my clothes (if it’s not a WOW, it’s a no.). And the container concept is helping my husband unemotionally part with items, which would otherwise be very difficult for him because his family fell on such hard times when their dad died.
Great post! My mom does this all the time. She also gives me tons of things I don’t want most from thrift stores. If I get rid of it she gets extremely mad and says I should have given back to her instead. Her house is crammed to the gills.
How do I get rid of things that she gives me and not make her mad? Any insights would be great. I couldn’t care less if people got rid of gifts I gave them so don’t understand this perspective. Thx!
Very insightful post! I’ve recently moved and got rid of about half of our possessions. There was a lot of junk (outdated electronics, things I held onto just in case); a lot of furniture we didn’t need, old clothes, and a lot of old paper records, including the records of deceased relatives. And now I still have a garage full of boxes with stuff I have no room for! I realized that most of the stuff I couldn’t get rid of was stuff I received from other people. There is an emotional and mental paralysis (and guilt) for getting rid of other peoples things. Your blog has helped me overcome the mental challenge of letting things go. Thank you!
I have read this post several times over the years, but I finally personalized it for myself. Now I ask the question, “if this is truly worth saving, what is it doing in a box in the garage?”
I started recycling, donating, throwing things away and occasionally bringing something in and putting it away. When it got too painful, I stopped. Those boxes have been in the garage 4 years and some of the contents have not seen the light of day for 20 years. They will wait.
The plaques and awards that looked great in my office are not what I want inside my home now that I am retired. I confess, I temporarily put two of them on top of the garbage can waiting for the courage to put them inside.