clean up your stuff!(or should you?)

After reading Plum Johnson’s “They Left Us Everything,” (see What I’m Reading, April 10, 2024), I’m feeling torn about Marie Kondo, the tiny hyper woman who told us all to thank our stuff and then let it go unless it brought us joy. According to Plum, cleaning out her parents’ very large and cluttered home brought a new appreciation for her parents, their past, their love story, and her family history. She lovingly catalogued and sorted over a century worth of stuff, and it took her a solid eighteen months. She photographed favourite areas of the house and made a photo book.
Whereas my brother-in-law told his parents that if they didn’t clean out their basement, when the time comes, he’s lighting a match and throwing it down the stairs. Obviously, there must be an in-between point here.

It's a bit of a paradox: we have too much stuff. All of us. We need to then find places to put it. Give us a house and we’ll fill not only the house, but the garage and the yard (someone said to me recently regarding all the car thefts in Toronto: Try using your garage for your car!). Some people rent storage units as their stuff overwhelms their capacity. On the other hand, we are told to reuse, recycle. Don’t throw things away, someone needs them. Stop buying new things. I can be guilty of “what if the kids need it”, hanging onto chipped bowls and old chairs, the fake Christmas tree we no longer use, the guinea pig cage.
 
What Plum found out—what perhaps anyone holding onto things “for the kids” finds out—is that no one wants the leftover stuff.  The clunky old furniture. The antique dresser with the drawers that are difficult to pull. Grandma’s silver tea set. That portrait painted by Aunt Bernice. Everyone over seventy seems to have an “irreplaceable” set of National Geographic magazines, or a set of encylopedias, and those items likely cost a lot, and were used as reference material prior to the Internet. Now, what to do with them? I can see how it’s difficult to say “thank you” and let them go. But are they actually bringing any joy?
 
Plum argues that if her parents had cleaned out their house, she would not have had the full experience of grief and letting go, and perhaps that’s true, but I think if you are going to endlessly hold onto things, you should bear some of the responsibility to clean them up.  Furthermore, wouldn’t you prefer to hand out, sell, toss, or donate according to your own whims, rather those of someone else?
 
Likely, these words will come back to haunt me. Like everyone, I have too much stuff, and I’m actively trying to purge—not quite to Marie Kondo level—but I have my sticking points (mainly books). I’m also hoping that my kids will know me (and our family history, if they’re interested), without having to clean out my home for eighteen months when my husband and I are gone.