Feelings, upon preparing to sort through a lifetime of stuff
My dad is what you could affectionately call a pack rat. Or non-affectionately call a high-functioning hoarder as you side-eye the stuff crammed into the attic, crawl spaces, rafters, basement, garage and shed of the otherwise lovely house he's lived in for more than 20 years and now shares with his (understandably distressed) fiancée, E.
A random sampling of said stuff from the basement alone is likely to include: piles of office supplies, tools, housewares, teaching materials, computers and printers from 1980ish to present, a mini fridge of questionable function, decades of National Geographics and woodworking magazines that he "might need to reference" one day, books, curtains from the '70s, dismantled furniture, family mementos, two empty fish tanks, decades of schoolwork and toys, and the crib from when my now-29-year-old sister was a baby. Items that have sentimental, monetary or practical value-and a lot of junk.
He does not like letting things go. When we moved, my mom says, he was willing to sell some items at a garage sale but refused to throw out anything that was left, including little scraps of paper. I believe he is one of those people who have difficulty separating emotions and memories from physical objects. Rejecting an object that belonged to him or that was a gift from him upsets him, likely because it is a symbol of rejecting him. (I don't have enough insight into his childhood to analyze why that might be, but it's not like he grew up an orphan or in poverty or during the Great Depression.) So it is more or less a miracle that E. has convinced him that something needs to be done before the place spontaneously combusts. And it was with a sense of relief that I accepted his request to spend some time up in NY and start clearing out the basement as a Father's Day gift. I'd always figured it wouldn't happen until he'd passed away.
The catch, if you can call it that, is that he wants me (and my sister) to tackle "our things" first-the 30 or so years of stuff stored in boxes and bins about which he's always said, "You'll want it when you're older." Well, we're older, we still don't want most of it, and finally he is ready to hear it. And if he isn't ready, then he is going to be banned from the room while we sift through everything and decide what to do with it all. What you don't see can't hurt you.
As the date draws near, however-am taking the train on Wednesday-I'm fretting more about how I will react to digging up the past. Opening myself up to feelings instead of raising the force field of upbeat indifference. Because it's always easier to toss someone else's stuff. The last time I visited, back in February, when we started to make a dent just to clear enough floor space for us to make the necessary piles during this next phase, I had no problem working to convince my dad that he didn't need three aged TVs in addition to the two actually in use in the house, or the questionably functioning laserjets he'd been saving for either spare parts (that are no longer compatible with anything) or for someone's kid going away to college (who could get a much smaller and less anvil-like printer for cheap). I mean, no luck getting him to part with umpteen piles of wood and the magazines and the fridge-instead, we employed the usual "let's move it somewhere else for now" method-but I was ready to chuck 'em. I'm ready to ransack his "half" of the basement. Easy.
But now is not that time. Now is the time for my sister and me to deal with our own, and I don't know what we'll find. Some of it will be easy to let go; I don't need the centerpieces from my bat mitzvah or the supplies from when we had a guinea pig or the ancient Visible Woman we never constructed, all of which I know are in there. Some I will probably want to keep. Of that, I will have to assess volume, because I live in a studio apartment and don't want to start saddling myself with storage units. And some… I don't know. There's bound to be a heap of "What do we do with this?" Stuff that we haven't thought about since we were kids, but once we rediscover it, might not be sure if we want to part with it. Stuff that will uncover my own weaknesses, like *cough* books. Stuff that might make me question my confidence in having a reasonable approach to materialism and the sufficiency of memories.
In a way it would be easier to toss everything without looking at it. It would have been easier if we'd made these decisions back when we or he packed up another batch of who-knows-what and stuck it in the crawl space to begin with. But a trip down memory lane also sounds like fun. Nostalgic, possibly teary, alternately joyful and depressing, fun.
So, friends. I come to you to share a plan of attack and to ask if any of you have dealt with similar situations and might have advice. How do you decide what to let go? How do you navigate other people's delicate emotions? (In February, E. cried and my dad clammed up/stood around staring helplessly.) How do you deal with your own? We have some go-to charities, but are there any in particular in this arena that you love? Is it an adult child's place to recommend or seek counseling for the object-attached parent? Etc.
Tactics:
All that being said... the whole thing might be fine. It might be fun and done quickly, with the bulk of work falling on the donation/sale side.
We'll see.
A random sampling of said stuff from the basement alone is likely to include: piles of office supplies, tools, housewares, teaching materials, computers and printers from 1980ish to present, a mini fridge of questionable function, decades of National Geographics and woodworking magazines that he "might need to reference" one day, books, curtains from the '70s, dismantled furniture, family mementos, two empty fish tanks, decades of schoolwork and toys, and the crib from when my now-29-year-old sister was a baby. Items that have sentimental, monetary or practical value-and a lot of junk.
He does not like letting things go. When we moved, my mom says, he was willing to sell some items at a garage sale but refused to throw out anything that was left, including little scraps of paper. I believe he is one of those people who have difficulty separating emotions and memories from physical objects. Rejecting an object that belonged to him or that was a gift from him upsets him, likely because it is a symbol of rejecting him. (I don't have enough insight into his childhood to analyze why that might be, but it's not like he grew up an orphan or in poverty or during the Great Depression.) So it is more or less a miracle that E. has convinced him that something needs to be done before the place spontaneously combusts. And it was with a sense of relief that I accepted his request to spend some time up in NY and start clearing out the basement as a Father's Day gift. I'd always figured it wouldn't happen until he'd passed away.
The catch, if you can call it that, is that he wants me (and my sister) to tackle "our things" first-the 30 or so years of stuff stored in boxes and bins about which he's always said, "You'll want it when you're older." Well, we're older, we still don't want most of it, and finally he is ready to hear it. And if he isn't ready, then he is going to be banned from the room while we sift through everything and decide what to do with it all. What you don't see can't hurt you.
As the date draws near, however-am taking the train on Wednesday-I'm fretting more about how I will react to digging up the past. Opening myself up to feelings instead of raising the force field of upbeat indifference. Because it's always easier to toss someone else's stuff. The last time I visited, back in February, when we started to make a dent just to clear enough floor space for us to make the necessary piles during this next phase, I had no problem working to convince my dad that he didn't need three aged TVs in addition to the two actually in use in the house, or the questionably functioning laserjets he'd been saving for either spare parts (that are no longer compatible with anything) or for someone's kid going away to college (who could get a much smaller and less anvil-like printer for cheap). I mean, no luck getting him to part with umpteen piles of wood and the magazines and the fridge-instead, we employed the usual "let's move it somewhere else for now" method-but I was ready to chuck 'em. I'm ready to ransack his "half" of the basement. Easy.
But now is not that time. Now is the time for my sister and me to deal with our own, and I don't know what we'll find. Some of it will be easy to let go; I don't need the centerpieces from my bat mitzvah or the supplies from when we had a guinea pig or the ancient Visible Woman we never constructed, all of which I know are in there. Some I will probably want to keep. Of that, I will have to assess volume, because I live in a studio apartment and don't want to start saddling myself with storage units. And some… I don't know. There's bound to be a heap of "What do we do with this?" Stuff that we haven't thought about since we were kids, but once we rediscover it, might not be sure if we want to part with it. Stuff that will uncover my own weaknesses, like *cough* books. Stuff that might make me question my confidence in having a reasonable approach to materialism and the sufficiency of memories.
In a way it would be easier to toss everything without looking at it. It would have been easier if we'd made these decisions back when we or he packed up another batch of who-knows-what and stuck it in the crawl space to begin with. But a trip down memory lane also sounds like fun. Nostalgic, possibly teary, alternately joyful and depressing, fun.
So, friends. I come to you to share a plan of attack and to ask if any of you have dealt with similar situations and might have advice. How do you decide what to let go? How do you navigate other people's delicate emotions? (In February, E. cried and my dad clammed up/stood around staring helplessly.) How do you deal with your own? We have some go-to charities, but are there any in particular in this arena that you love? Is it an adult child's place to recommend or seek counseling for the object-attached parent? Etc.
Tactics:
- Digitize. My sister and I will have cameras. We expect that taking pictures will be all we need of many of the nostalgic items. It'll also be possible to scan paper items; JPGs take up much less space than binders.
- Decimate. If I uncover a box of, like, cute schoolwork from age five, take one piece of art or a sheet on which I learned to write the alphabet and let go of the rest. Ditto for the Star Trek paperbacks I know are lurking in there somewhere; take a couple of favorites only, if that much. Bite the bullet and ask for an e-reader for my birthday.
- Regift. Giving Legos, Barbies and who knows what other toys and games to friends' children means we know they're going to a good home.
- Write. I'm going to take a notebook for jotting down memories that pop up or to work through anything difficult.
- Make piles. I think the first-pass piles will be "keep" and "don't keep." As time allows, "don't keep" then gets sorted into sell, donate, give to friends/kids, and throw out/recycle. There'll probably also be a pile of "hold for future decision."
All that being said... the whole thing might be fine. It might be fun and done quickly, with the bulk of work falling on the donation/sale side.
We'll see.