De-Cluttering a Cluttered Life

My parents’ washer and dryer are probably 10-15 years old and I can tell that the drum bearing on the washer needs replacing. Given their age I’ve decided it would be better to replace them than repair them. Which has placed cleaning the utility room at the top of my priority list. It’s an interesting experience. Like much of the house it’s sort of a miniature archaeological dig through the strata of my family’s history.

The top stratum consists of towels from my parents’ condominiums. When the management company replaced the towels in the units, my parents elected to keep the old ones rather than throw them away. I, on the other hand, have little compunction about getting rid of them. They are a symbol of my parents’ inability to get rid of anything that might conceivably be of use to them at some unknown point in town.

The next layer is old clothes belonging to me. Not sure why these are down here instead of up in my closet but given that it’s stuff I probably haven’t worn in 25+ years, I have no problem getting rid of them as well.

There’s a layer of baby clothes that were presumably worn by my brother and me. I don’t seem to be in any danger of having a baby anytime soon and I doubt my friends would be interested in them. Besides, there have probably been a few safety-oriented improvements in baby clothes since I wore them. Out they go.

There’s a layer of things that belonged to my grandparents. Not just clothes but stuff like dish towels and lace doilies and the like. I can understand my parents not wanting to get rid of the stuff. I feel a bit of nostalgia myself when I look at a particular hat that belonged to my grandmother. But my parents did the same thing I would do with the stuff. Shove in an out of the way corner and never look at it again, leaving it for my heirs to do something with it.

If there’s a lesson to be learned here it’s that we go through life accumulating things that we continue to hold on to long past the time we should. It feels so much better to clean out the clutter from time to time, getting rid of what we no longer need. Do you want to live with piles of things you have no use for or do you want to thoroughly clean house from time to time and have a home that you can enjoy to the full? I know what my answer to that question is.