“It is amazing, and also a little strange, how many things we accumulate in a lifetime.”
― Margareta Magnusson, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter
With summer’s arrival, yard sale season begins in earnest, wherein we get an up close and personal view of all the excess doodads and thingamabobs our neighbors have decided they no longer need. That, coupled with the steady stream of donations left at the door of the thrift shop, my garage overflowing with random junk, and the plethora of things that pop up on social media for sale or for free leave me asking myself how — and more importantly, why — we seem to have more stuff than we know what to do with.
According to statistics, 11.1% of U.S. households are spending an average of $85 a month for self-storage. There are 52,301 self-storage facilities in the U.S. and more than 80% of those are occupied. That doesn’t even count the garages, sheds, barns, trailers, attics, basements, closets and dresser drawers. Most of the time we manage the overflow ourselves for years, shuffling boxes and tools and Christmas decorations and leftover things from relatives around from house to house. We leave things behind when we move, then buy more. Anyone else guilty of moving stored boxes from one house to another without stopping to see what’s inside?
It seems wasteful to throw it all in a landfill, and it’s not always easy to pawn it off on other people. Who wants a giant bag of ratty jeans that were intended to be used for a quilt six obsessive hobbies ago? Or the random tool purchased for a single project that now takes up space on a shelf in the garage? To say nothing of everything that gets labeled “but I might need that later.” Yes, yes, I know… the second you get rid of it, you’ll need it.
The trouble really comes home to roost when a family member passes away and we find ourselves the keepers of all their amassed possessions. As if we didn’t have enough clutter of our own to begin with, now we’ve got to deal with grief and Grannie’s stuff at the same time. The sheer exhaustion on the faces of family members going through the “cleaning out so-and-so’s house” is painful to witness.
There are methods… Swedish death cleaning (see the title of the book above in the quote). Marie Kondo became famous for her “Does it bring joy?” decluttering system, but once she had children apparently succumbed to the clutter herself. And there’s the hardcore industrial-strength process from “Hoarders.” If hazmat suits are required, you may want to consider professional help.
Some people find the decluttering process easy, others struggle. The hardest part, I think, for all of us, is resisting the temptation to turn right back around and refill those closets and drawers and sheds with more stuff.