Stuff

I’ve been dealing with a lot of stuff lately. When I say “stuff,” I am not speaking metaphorically but literally—as in physical stuff: clothes, shoes, dishes, dish towels, jewelry, letters, books, photos, and so on. Having decided not to travel anywhere this spring break, I focused instead on going through some of the accumulation in my house—the bulging closets and dresser drawers, the cabinets and cupboards. Most of the accumulation is made up of my own things, but some of it is still left from my mother and from our family having lived here for nearly 25 years. The other stuff I was dealing with was my grandparents’ belongings. Now that my grandfather has died and my grandmother is no longer living in their condo, my aunt is preparing to sell it. She invited me to go take a look around and see if there was anything I’d like to keep.

A friend of mine is going through a similar process. Her husband died of brain cancer two and a half years ago, and now she is selling the home she and her husband raised their sons in. Both of us have a strong desire to reduce clutter, simplify, and move forward in our lives, and yet this process of excavating, sorting, and bringing to a close past lives is painful and complicated. Over the years, I’ve heard a number of people dismiss physical goods as “just stuff” and tout the superior value of simplicity and the present moment. These people have no trouble throwing things away. In many respects, I admire this attitude and ability to quickly and efficiently dispose of clutter. There is a cleanness in this lack of sentimentality. But for many of us, stuff isn’t just stuff in and of itself—it is a representation or connection to something or someone, and that is what we have difficulty throwing away or carting off to the thrift store.

This becomes even more difficult and complicated when the person the stuff is connected to is no longer with us, and if the life the stuff had a context in no longer exists. When I talked to my friend, she shared her struggle about what to do with a drawer full of peignoir sets. They had all been gifts from her husband and she had only worn them for him and enjoyed them in the context of her relationship with him. What should she do with them now? She recognized that there was no point in keeping them (nor was it possible, given the limited space she would have after moving), but how could she just throw away his gifts of love to her? I suggested she keep a representative one and get rid of the rest. She agreed that this was a good compromise, and we resolved that issue on a practical level. But in having to decide the fate of those peignoirs, she was having to face the reality that the life those peignoirs existed in is over, and that she will never wear them for the man who bought them for her again. And that is a reality she has to confront over and over again with each drawer and closet and cupboard.

Earlier this week, I opened a drawer in my own house and found it full of catalogs, brochures, and pages torn out of decorating magazines. I also found dozens of white notepad sheets covered in my mother’s scrawling handwriting with ideas about window treatments, flower arrangements, bathroom configurations, and so on. In the year before she got sick, my mother had begun planning major renovations and decorating changes to the house. The physical layout and décor were still left over from the 70s and our years of family life, and now that my siblings and I were all grown and moved out, my mother was excited to change things into a more updated house that she and my father could enjoy during his retirement years. Obsessive planner and resource-gatherer that my mother was, she filled that very large and deep drawer to the point that I had trouble opening it. On the practical front, of course I was going to empty the drawer and throw the stuff away. It was pointless to keep all of that when there was no longer any context or use for it. My mother is gone, I now own the house, and I have already renovated and decorated it to my own taste. But before I could throw it away, I had to look at it all. I had to read all her notes and scribbles and consider the fabric swatches she had collected. I had to sit with all my mother’s dreams for her house and her life with my father and the visiting grandchildren and mourn that they would never come to pass. And then, after saving a few sample notes, I threw it away and cleared the space for the things of my current life.

At my grandparents’ condo, I got stuck on a drawer full of tacky plastic placemats. There is no way I’d ever use those placemats in my own house, and I knew it would be ridiculous to bring them home and fill up cupboard space with them. But I had to spend some time just looking at those placemats and remembering all the times I ate KFC dinners off of them as a child visiting with my family for the day. Attached to those placemats was the memory of swimming in the pool at their clubhouse (they lived in a retirement community), of watching my dad and grandpa in friendly but intense ping pong matches, and of sitting on their scratchy olive green sofa reading while the adults talked. Those placemats brought those memories flooding back, vivid and strong. What happens when the placemats are gone? When the whole condo is gone?

Getting rid of stuff is painful and scary because it feels like getting rid of connections to the past, to memories, and, most of all, to people. And yet, to be completely honest, there’s a way in which all that stuff is kind of a drag. It can weigh you down, and it can be a time and energy-consuming pain in the ass to have to deal with. So there is a bright side to this. While the mining and excavating is painful, and it’s exhausting hauling up all those stores of memories and grief and disposing of all the garbage bags and bulky items and papers to be shredded, there is space and lightness afterwards. There is a making way for other things, for the hope and freedom and joy in life that we may not quite believe in yet but are making ourselves ready to receive.