View from the North 40: The mad, mad world of things and stuff

A May 31, 2017, headline on NBCNews.com says, “One in Four Americans Has a Clutter Problem.” I know that’s true because my husband and I are related to every last one of ones with the problem, evidence that my point has validity.

I don’t know this scientifically, but I have a pretty good hunch that by the time we are of adult age we start having moments when we think about our parents and grandparents getting older, ourselves getting older, too.

We intellectually understand that the years of life bring transitions and death. We consider how to deal with the changes and losses. And many people have to think of estates and inheritance, along with the memorabilia and random sentimental keepsakes.

What we don’t think about are the bajillions of items in most people’s possession that have been bought, bartered for, shelved, filed, stowed and left sitting in limbo on a surface without making a decision on the preferred method of display or storage or disposal.

Did you know that U.S. Self-Storage Statistics from March 2020 show that 9.4 percent of Americans paid $39 million to store in 1.7 billion square feet of space more stuff than these people needed to look at, touch or use on any given day. These numbers don’t include the at-home storage in sheds and garages.

During times of housing transition or death, each item in the home and in storage must be dealt with, and if it’s not the owner of said items — cue scary music here — it just might be you.

I’m not talking about dealing with hoarders here. That would be easy — to the floor-to-ceiling stacks of newspapers lining the hallway, I’d say, So long, sucrappy. To the outdated Mac-n-cheese and other dietary staples stashed in the pantry: Adios, oldies but no longer goodies. To the collections of old shoelaces, used paper plates and pre-loved Q-tips stacked on the table: See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.

That NBC News article also said that the average household contains 300,000 items. Three-hundred thousand individual items. That’s solidly in the six-figure range, in case you got lost in all the zeroes but, still, don’t think of them as “items,” you need to think of them as “issues.”

Because, in fact, the 300,000 items must be gone through, considered, decided about and acted upon, and this marathon of decision-making most likely must all happen in a few short days, or maybe weeks if you’re lucky.

My husband and I have been involved in 11 of these marathons including the first big transition in 1999, when my parents decided to sell everything, buy a fifth-wheel camper and live on the road. Because my parents were spearheading their own estate dispersal, aka making their own 300K decisions, it was a pretty good introduction to the process for us, a low-stress learning experience.

For this practical test, if you will, on need assessment and decision making, we simply had to decide what was worth taking home, and what should be let go of. We failed miserably. Mis-er-a-bly, I say.

I still have unopened boxes of stuff from that day.

And I think it’s a rule of the universe that you are doomed to repeat any life lesson which you fail.

This go-round we are guided via phone conversations by the owner of the things, who has already transitioned, in body, to the new much-smaller home. We are, I think, getting better, but perhaps more bitter, as well, sorting and tossing a lifetime of memorabilia, failing to recognize valuable antiques which we would have unwittingly given away, staring hopelessly at the pickup load of family heirlooms that has waited for two years in boxes for its distant family by marriage twice removed to come retrieve.

I’ll tell you these things about the process of clearing out someone else’s stuff of life.

1) At some point, you will say, “What in the (blank) is this?

2) At some point, against your better judgment and the strident voice of the sane angel on your shoulder, you will take something unnecessary to function of your life home with you. You will say, “I shouldn’t but … ,” as if you just decided to eat a sugar cookie for supper.

3) At some point, you will say, “Why the holy why are there so many of these things in this house?”

And 4) At some point, you will walk into your own home, take a look around with your newly sharpened eyes and freshly hardened heart, and you will start throwing your own things away — your stuff, too.

It’s the only action that makes sense, the only test answer that leads back to a state of balance in the universe.

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I’m going to call this feeling zen and the art of equilibrium of stuff at [email protected] .