Decluttering – A Personal Experience
April 28th, 2010My father died in June 2005. This left my mother living in her home by herself. She was adamant about not moving. In August, I started sorting through my father’s belongings, deciding what to keep, what to give away and what to throw out. It is important to know that my parents had lived in this house since 1949.
To my utter astonishment, on the first day, I found an envelope with six, one hundred dollar bills in it. I realized that I was going to have to look into every envelope, every book and every bag in the house. The other astounding thing was that there was a room in the basement, which had hundreds and hundreds of plastic bags in it.
In August 2006, my mother collapsed physically because she had lost control of her diet and the large number of drugs that she was taking. We took her to the geriatrics ward of the local hospital. They stabilized her and we put her in an assisted living facility.
Now the efforts to empty the house intensified. It took me four months to empty every room. As I encountered objects and documents from my childhood, it turned into a very emotional process.
In the end, two things happened. One, my wife and I started sorting our things and giving away or throwing out as much as possible. We are committed to never doing to anyone, what we allowed my parents to do to us. The second was that I ended up putting $1,800 in her bank account.
William Jack
