Declutter before you die




A friend sent me a link to an article  recently published in The New Yorker entitled Five Ways To Declutter By Reckoning With Your Mortality Plus One Bonus Tip. I badly need doing it said my friend - meaning the decluttering of course, not the dying.
It's a good article, quite humorous.  I definitely love the container store tip.
But seriously this decluttering thing is much more complicated than it sounds.
I have written about decluttering  in this blog a few times, the last time  coinciding with when I decided to rent out my flat while I was in  Indonesia for a a few months.  I kind of had to: my guest was going to need space for her own possessions and I definitely had  much stuff that needed sorting (please note, carefully storing, not throwing away, unless absolutely necessary), not to mention a good clean.
 Overall I am not fully convinced that getting rid of one's possessions is conducive to happiness, goodbye rituals notwithstanding. Yes, I realise we can't take anything with us when we die, but surely it is the least of our worries? OK, other people will have to sort out our clutter - but let them. That's the way it works. It's also called inheriting - I inherited a lovely carpet from my mother, for example.
I am not advocating a life in which we are swamped by litter and chaos, definitely not, cleanliness is very important. What I am saying though is that we often end up getting rid of things that we actually need or which might turn out to be useful years after we acquire them.
There is also immense  pleasure in rummaging in boxes we have stored away, reopening them after a long time. Only the other day I found a jumper which was in mint condition and really pretty, which I had hidden away with the intention of getting rid of as it was in a bag full of discarded fabric, only forgot all about it - and am glad I did not dispose of it. Maybe I wanted to add something to it - a couple of years ago I got a sewing machine I soon fell out of love with, but never got round to it. Anyway, it is now back with the other jumpers.

Books are the other thing I simply cannot give away. I find the rule of not keeping any book you have not read rather silly. I might buy a couple of books and not read them until much later, that's the whole point of having one's own library, as well as the opportunity one has to read again those books  already read - rereading is an art in itself. Umberto Eco had a personal library of 50,000 volumes. When asked whether he had read them all he famously replied that he had not but loved the idea he could always find something new to read.
Very full bookshelves cheer me up. I am so very glad that my son, now living on his own, has inherited this passion for books. When I last visited he showed me some gorgeous volumes he had picked at Oxfam Books and began telling me about his plans for floor to ceiling bookshelves.
I once felt tempted to prune my library lured by the promise of  one of those services that seem to have mushroomed all over the internet which  buy unwanted books . I spent a whole day sorting my books into bundles then pricing them and packing them, only to realise I just could not get rid of them like that. I carefully removed them from the boxes and muttering an 'I am so sorry' aimed at my precious tomes  I lovingly lifted them and put them back on the shelves, where they belonged.  Books are friends, for life. How can we part with them so flippantly, just to 'eliminate clutter'?

Minimalist living from Yoga Journal

Minimalism is appealing,I definitely love looking at those beautiful pictures in blogs devoted to minimalist style, such as the one above, from an article on decluttering in Yoga Journal .  But it is not suited to everyone.
Decluttering is a bit of  fad, at the moment. Sure, we don't need  to keep all bits of papers we handle - but let's not get carried away with throwing things.  We might actually need those papers as soon as we get rid of them. Ever found yourself having to spend the good part of  a day on the phone to HMRC or the HR  department of a former employer  trying to locate records relating to your employment which you no longer have because you have chucked away payslips and bank statements and you desperately need the information, no longer accessible to you?
So yes, let's declutter, but sensibly.  And honestly, the last thing on my mind is to make a good impression on those who inherit my mess.  It is at it were, the privilege of dying - there has to be something good about it, after all. Who cares what happens or what people think of me when I am gone?  Everything truly becomes immaterial.

Comments

  1. I've recently been thinking about this very subject! Have gone through several "declutter" binges over the past couple of years, and wish I had been a bit more careful. Carelessly moved on some items that I've come to regret. So now, I happily live with the things I love, and yes...... someone else can deal with it all later. I completely understand apologizing to your books. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment