Declutter When You Retire
Today after church I got the opportunity to talk to another fellow at church who is older than me and I asked what he was up to. He said he was cleaning out his house before he dies. This was a little disconcerting in that you usually don’t hear of people preparing to die. However, as he went on to explain his thinking I was both impressed and I thought, “I will need to do that, and I want to tell others about this great mindset.” You see my friend has had to clean up after three older relatives who died.
He had to go into the houses of people who have collected things their whole lives and, with the help of others who were appropriately involved, attempt to throw out the unwanted, pass out the sentimental things, and give away or sell things of value that are still not wanted by others. He said he’s just trying to do some of these things before he gets so old that he can’t do them. He’s thinking of his son and daughter who are not in need of that burden, but would much rather go through the grieving process being able to focus on the good memories of their parents rather than sifting through stuff.
If you have parents who are getting old take a moment to discuss this idea with them. You might choose to pick up the book ‘It’s All Too Much!‘ so that they have some good motivation. The idea is not to get rid of everything, but to get rid of any clutter or excess items that are not going to be valuable to family members. I recently had another friend tell me that they moved their parents across town and they had several weeks of garage sales to get rid of stuff as well as finding things like fifty gallon drums that were empty but there because at some point in time they’d been ‘left’ there… nobody needed them, nobody wanted them, but they’d been collected and forgotten. Take the time now to go through those things while everyone is hopefully cognizant, and get ahead of the potential stress. You may enjoy the memories reminisced now together rather than having more reminders of past times later, but diminished by the distraction of ‘junk.’
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October 8th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
I am not sure about this mindset. When my great grandparents died, we had to do the “cleaning out.” I loved my great grandparents, but felt that I had never really known them as people. Having to “clean out” was an experience that helped me get to know them a little better. You can tell a lot about people based on the things they keep and have kept for years. The whole day spent in the house that my grandad built made me feel closer to them than I ever had as a little girl. Maybe the thing to remember is that even if you “declutter” there are things of a value that may not be monitary. Throw out the bank and credit card statements, keep the love letters, the greeting cards, the post cards, the pictures and the journals. Your kids and grandkids may enjoy getting to know who you were outside the role of mom/dad or grandad and grandma.