Best Laid Plans (2)

In short (but it didn’t feel short, not at all), it took two cold icy slippery winters separated by a hot, sweaty summer to clear out all that junk. And after that, the house desperately needed a good cleaning – it’s been years since my mother had the strength and energy to keep up with dirt, and it upset her to see anyone else (me) doing what she couldn’t do. Scrubbing woodwork and walls was even more exhausting than clearing out junk.

But at last it’s done; some of the usable things went to an auction house to be sold, while others went to Goodwill (we gave so much to Goodwill that the staff at the store in her area started to recognize us). We probably have a buyer for the house. And only a few weeks ago, when we thought all the stuff behind stuff had been cleaned out except for a few books that the auctioneer rejected after they sat on the same shelves unread for the past forty or fifty years, I found two old brass vases hiding behind the books! They’re fairly ugly, but they belonged to my grandmother, and I’m keeping them.

Oh, and the Great Cleanout I had planned to start last New Years? It didn’t happen. Yet.

But it will, soon. After another week to rest and recover, I’m going to start throwing things away here. I had planned to allow myself more time off – but looking at the mess is getting on my nerves. (That’s a good sign, right?) My living room is so full of boxes that came from my mother’s house that it could be featured on one of those TV shows about hoarders. Boxes have come and boxes have gone, but for the last month I’ve been too tired to cope with them, and boxes have stayed. Time to make them go away.

Best Laid Plans (1)

About a year and a half ago, I started cleaning out my mother’s house, and almost immediately learned that keeping stuff “because I might need it someday” or “because it’s too good to throw out” is a bad idea. Clearly, it’s time to dejunk my own home – but I had to finish my mother’s first. Days and weeks and months went by, and my husband and I kept filling up trash cans and lugging dozens of big black trash bags out to the end of her driveway to be hauled away. Over and over, I thought we were almost finished; we never were. As soon as we cleared away one mess, we found another hiding behind it.

But at last, when 2014 was almost over, the end seemed in sight. And I had such great plans. I knew exactly how I was going to spend the winter – at home, cozily busy indoors, discarding piles and piles of my unneeded, unwanted, unloved junk. Bags and boxes on top of bags and boxes, out the door and gone with the trash collectors. And when spring came, I was going to look back on months of accomplishment and look forward to a new, streamlined life.

So much for plans.

The trouble was, even after a year of work, I still didn’t realize how cluttered my mother’s house was. There was still stuff behind stuff, all sorts of stuff, three different types of stuff. Some of it, my parents valued but I don’t have enough room to store it or any desire to own it – but maybe someone else would. Then there were perfectly good things I don’t think they realized they had, like half a dozen can openers, ten or twenty or thirty years old (judging by the price tags), still in their original store packaging. (These first two categories were easy; they could be given away or sold.) And finally there was stuff, lots of it, that they might have valued once, and shoved out of the way someplace or other, and never touched again while it deteriorated and became unusable.

And I had no time or energy left to tackle my own mess. Instead, this house got more and more cluttered as we brought home boxes of papers – as many boxes as the back of the car would hold – that I didn’t have time to sort through while we were at my mother’s house.

So much stuff, and so little of it any use to anybody.