Your Stuff, Your Kids’ Stuff, Your Parents’ Stuff

Once upon a time, two Baby Boomers moved out of their parents’ houses and established a home. In the beginning they had nothing, but then they began to collect Stuff. After awhile they had children of their own, and the children started to accumulate their own personal Stuff. The Baby Boomers’ parents then decided to downsize and gave a lot of their Stuff to the Baby Boomers. The Baby Boomers’ children proceeded to grow up and go to college and find a place of their own to live, which was too small to hold all of their Stuff. They asked the Baby Boomers if they would store their Stuff for them until they could afford a larger place in which to keep the Stuff. So the Baby Boomers now live in their house happily surrounded by their own Stuff, their parents’ Stuff, and their kids’ Stuff. The End.

Not. ;-)

As any professional organizer will tell you, the revelation is coming. Or maybe it’s the revolution. There simply is not room enough for all that Stuff!

In Organizing for the Spirit, I talk about the nature of “stuff” and the importance of continually making the decisions that will help to manage it. Unfortunately, too many people wait until it’s too late – until they’re too elderly or sick or tired or rushed – to make the best kinds of decisions; the kinds of decisions that may shape a legacy for generations to come.

A legacy is “anything handed down from the past”, and while we hopefully think of the word in terms of something enriching or noble, a legacy can also be – a mess. That’s right. You can be left with a meticulously organized scrapbook of memories, or an overwhelming scrap heap, or something in-between. The quality of your decisions will determine the contributions you make and the way you are remembered.

While it can be meaningful to preserve and pass on the things in your life that are treasures, the hard fact is – not everything you’ve accumulated in your lifetime is a treasure. Your responsibility is to identify what has value to you and treat those items accordingly. Leaving it all for someone else to deal with is unfair and deprives your family of the opportunity to understand and appreciate your values.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of “once upon a time” scenarios lately – generations of Stuff that has become a burden to the people who have to live with it and the people who will have to dispose of it in the future. In one case, two daughters have been left with a garage packed with boxes that have to be picked through meticulously, because priceless heirlooms were tossed in with junk. It’s not because their parents didn’t care about the burden they were leaving behind; it was because they didn’t know how to organize and discriminate as they went along, and by the time action needed to be taken, it was too late.

Organizing is not just about “getting rid of Stuff”. And it’s not really about making room to collect more Stuff. It’s about developing a lifestyle that encourages you to keep only what has usefulness or meaning and significance. It’s about enjoying what you have, and passing on an inheritance of shared memories.

If you feel overwhelmed with everyone’s Stuff and not sure where to start, try having a conversation with a family member about their own Stuff. Not a critical, blaming conversation (“Why are you keeping all of this **** Stuff?!) but an open, honest one about what’s important to him/her, and why. See if you can discover what 10 items are the most precious. Ask about associated memories and recollections of related events.

It can be difficult to let things go; it can feel like you’re losing a piece of yourself or someone else. But encouraging family members to be part of a continuing evaluation process allows for more closeness and understanding. Plus it ensures that something can be appreciated for what it means to a person, as opposed to becoming part of an overpowering sense of clutter.

It’s never too early to begin the process. Even young children can learn how to assess the changing value of their possessions, and when it’s time to pack up or pass on the cherished items of earlier days. This skill will become more valuable over time as they move from one place to another, and will become an absolute necessity in their later years.

Stuff can be a blessing or a burden. Make those decisions before someone else has to make them for you.

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“Our lives are shaped as much by those who leave us as they are by those who stay. Loss is our legacy. Insight is our gift. Memory is our guide.”

-- Hope Edelman