#clean-out

Spring Cleaning: Thought Edition

Even though weather wise it does not quite feel like spring in many places, it has officially been spring for approximately a month. With the change of seasons, many people take the time to engage in a deep cleaning of their personal surroundings. While it is important to make sure our surroundings are relatively clean and clutter-free, there are certainly other areas of our lives that we need to…

Spring Cleaning Your Life: The Kitchen Edition

Now that we are WELL into the spring season, this is a perfect time to declutter and clean various aspects of our lives. So, for those of you who need encouragement to embark on a spring cleaning program…look no further! In this series of posts, you’ll find inspiration and practical tips on ways to ruthlessly purge items and to do a hard-core cleaning of areas that are often overlooked or even…

And now, in response to all who have questioned my intelligence, I can offer absolute proof I graduated from kindergarten — that place where, as we all learned from author Robert Fulghum, we learn everything we need to know.

 My kindergarten diploma — officially my “Bachelor of Rhymes” degree from Saint Teresa School in Summit, N.J. — is among the many priceless items discovered inside the dozens (hundreds?) of boxes we’ve gone through as part of the Great Meyer Empty Nest Cleanout Project.  

 Close behind that gem is a photo of my (championship?) Boston University floor hockey team and the final baseball team lucky enough to have me as a member before my premature retirement due to “igenium defectum” (lack of talent).  

 Yes, this geezer household unloading process, which I announced in my May 7 blog post, has been full of interesting finds.

 Quickly recapping the circumstances: With two grown children and two retirees (one long done and a second on the way), we faced a pressing need to clean out our living space, either as a prelude to moving to be closer to our West Coast family or downsizing elsewhere or simply being responsible geezers (and not leaving a huge mess for our children to clean up after we’re gone).

 A really positive person would describe all the many discoveries in this endeavor, like those above, as comforting stopovers on a heart-warming trip down memory lane.

 Conversely, a “Debbie Downer” would see them as preludes to death — you

know, when your whole life flashes before you.  

 There are, of course, elements of both. The entire mission is a mixed bag, sort of like (heavy stuff alert) life itself, which (again) is what all the mounds of material represent: our 60-plus years of living semi-large.

 For starters in the emotion department, there is the highly anticipated “freeing” feeling as burdensome stockpiles of curiously saved items are finally discarded. The stuff had to go eventually so it’s terrific that we’re getting it out now.

 That is balanced against constant sadness as once-valued possessions — and the wonderful memories they stir— are tossed aside forever. I mean, really forever. Good-bye.

 It’s very tough to let go.

 Accompanying those emotions is tremendous guilt at sending an ungodly amount of stuff — paper, clothing, toys, newspapers, magazines, boxes, notebooks, furnishings — to local landfills or recycling centers.  Even with the most reusable items being put aside for a hoped-for garage sale in the spring, there has been a steady stream of disposable items every week for the last seven months.

But keeping items also carries guilt. I just can’t get up the strength to immediately jettison things like scorebooks for my sons’ baseball teams (I was the scorekeeper), memorabilia from several fun family trips, keepsake T-shirts and sweatshirts (for favorite sports teams, vacation spots, special occasions) and clips or copies of dozens of news articles I wrote over my nearly 30 years in the newspaper business.

 There will come a time to bid adieu to them all, I know. Just not right away. Gonna take a few more months.    

 Were we hoarders? Some may see us that way, if they are the type that discards life’s accumulations as soon as they no longer have a role in their lives.  They are lucky to have that mindset, in some ways. But, in other ways, they are kind of coldly detached from their past, under-appreciative — in my way of thinking, at least — of the many wonderful things and moments and accomplishments they have experienced.

 A better word for me would be a “savorer” — one who likes to savor the good times. (In the most negative sense, I guess I’m an “extreme savorer” or “chronic savorer.” )

 Going back over saved greeting cards from family members, some now deceased, brings back special times, long-forgotten sentiments.

 Reading my news coverage of numerous issues in Hickory, N.C., or Kingsport, Tenn., or Clinton, N.Y., allows a rare, concrete pride in a life well-lived, replacing a vague regret for an exciting life now long past.  

 There is no way I would have remembered many of those special parts of my life, and countless others, without spending time with the items we stored.  It’s like a memory stirred by an old song or photograph, only a thousand times more intense. It is a good thing.

 The steady flood of quality nostalgia so far has come primarily from:

 ** My two sons middle school and high school stuff.

 ** Every Clinton Courier and Kirkland Newspaper produced over my 17-18 years of stewardship.

 ** Notebooks and files from seven years of news coverage at daily newspapers in Kingsport and Hickory along with all my files and notebooks from the Courier and Newspaper/Newsline years.

 ** Favorite toys and stuffed animals (and a lot of ordinary ones) from our sons’ youth.

 ** Armloads of clothing that once were a regular part of my wardrobe.

 ** Folders of personal items kept from various trips to California and other places.

 There have been a few “what were we thinking?” moments along the way. We kept a lot of room decorations, furnishings and boxes, including boxes for just about every major toy purchase, for no other reason than laziness — not knowing what to do with them or not wanting to get rid of something that could prove valuable/needed or just not wanting to make an immediate decision about their fate.

 The idea, evidently, was to keep the stuff temporarily. But “out of sight, one of mind” ruled as life’s other priorities took over.

 In retrospect, though, our failing was not the uncontrolled saving of a ridiculous amount of things that would prove to be worthless. Our mistake was not periodically revisiting our storage places — say once every five years — to pluck out trash-worthy items. That’s the lesson for all you “youngsters” out there who may be planning to own their own homes and start families. .

 Yes, it also would have helped if I were a little less accumulative in nature. I didn’t need a hat or a pen or a T-shirt or a hoodie or a refrigerator magnet for each important place or event in my life. But, to be fair to myself, the items did help me feel very good for many years — wearing that BU hockey championship T-shirt, writing with that Yankee mini-bat pen, throwing on that “Wicked” hoodie, doffing the Los Angeles Coroner hat or T-shirt (from our strange visit to the coroner’s gift shop featured in a CNN report) . . .

 With such purchases, I was able to stretch the enjoyment of many sporting events, trips and special occasions over several years.  The problem is that, over time, such stretching piled up and, in hindsight, got out of control.

 Still, I am getting to relive lots of those moments now, in my early 60s. Thus, the past purchases continue to broaden my present experiences — filling out, or deepening, if you will, my memory.  In addition, there have been a number of “finds,” like special toys from our sons’ youth that can be passed on to our grandchildren.

 But, for all but these relatively few items, our quick re-immersions in the nostalgia pool are the grand finale. Sad but true.

 Memory-sparkers by the hundreds are being given just a glance, a brief encounter, maybe photographed, maybe shared with family, and then sent on their way to the dustbin of history (i.e., landfills). As I noted in my original blog post on the process, we really have no other choice.

 And, as indicated above in my warning to future empty-nesters, we are behind in the exercise. Thus, we have the added factor of sheer exhaustion in the effort.

 Even with pacing ourselves — putting in about two hours at a clip, two or three days a week — the removal and proper disposal of all these items has been physically draining.

 There are dozens of trips up and down stairs and from house to garage. There are a few dozen trips to the Salvation Army for clothing donations, to the transfer stations for trash disposal and to the solid waste facility for dumping electronics.  

 We have come far but we have a long way to go. It may be mid-summer before we’re in a position to declare our home move-ready, or at least garage-sale-ready. That would put us about three months behind our original schedule.

 So, second tip for families facing the same situation: Put aside lots of time for the household emptying.

 Along the way, we also must decide what it all means. Are we moving? Has the vast disposal left us better off or worse off?

 I will only be able to reach a conclusion on such matters once we settle on our residence of the future.

 That’s an entirely different process, one we have only addressed so far in dream fashion.  

 For now, as 2015 draws to a close, we still have our residence of the present and our slowly dwindling possessions from of the past.