Years ago, relatives of mine “adopted” an elderly friend who said she had no family. They invited “Iris” to share in holiday meals, purchased her gifts, drove her to appointments, and so on. She had one rule: No one could come into her home. Despite others’ pleading and cajoling, Iris could not be budged, not even when her phone broke. For years the state of the inside of her home remained a mystery to us. We imagined the worst, but we were helpless to do anything.
Then came the day a month or so ago that Iris had a medical crisis. Her phone happened to be working at the moment. She phoned 911 and agreed to meet them in her garage. One thing led to another, and the police apparently entered her home. Adult Protective Services declared the home unfit to live in, and today Iris remains in a nursing home recuperating from her illness. She may never return home.
After Iris’s humiliation that people had entered her home, she allowed them to try to help her. What my family found was that her home was worse than even their imaginations. As expected, there were the deep piles of clutter to be carefully navigated. What they weren’t prepared for were the coffee tins filled with urine, some including discarded syringes from Iris’s administering herself her insulin. Bags of trash were strewn about, with gaping holes where rodents had gnawed into them. The kitchen counter and other surfaces had mouse nests apparently made from the ready supply of years’ worth of stacked newspapers. Every surface of the home was covered with mouse droppings.
Apparently, the water had been disconnected for some time, but Iris wouldn’t let anyone know. The furnace had also been broken for days, but she hadn’t told anyone. Having running water, heat, and a healthy environment was less important to her than keeping this burdensome secret for all of these years.
As vile as I found their description of Iris’s home, I’m more horrified by what it must be like to one day find yourself in the situation that your things have become unmanageable. Clearly, one has to have some kind of mental deficiency to let things go to this degree, but how many of us live in homes with attics or basement full of clutter we aren’t using? At what point do we plan to get a grip on our own clutter? And if we haven’t made a plan, what will keep us from becoming Iris someday?
This situation made me consider that we should have some kind of lifelong philosophy about our accumulation of things or our things may literally bury us someday. And if they don’t bury us, they will be the tedious chore of loved ones who must sort through things we should have taken care of years ago.
My philosophy in a nutshell is this:
As we age, we should continually pare down what we own, leaving only those things that are most precious and most useful to us.
A few observations
- We always have the same amount of time every day to give our attention to anything. If the things we own now are filling our day, then when we bring new things into our home, we will naturally have things that are not being used. One way to remedy this is to follow the rule that for every new thing that you bring into your home, at least one or two old items leave it. If we all simply adopted this rule, we would at least have no more clutter than we do right now.
- With experience, we learn what is most precious in life. We become more adept at learning what gives us joy. I think that most people find these are not usually the things we have stored away, but relationships and a limited number of objects that stimulate the expansion of our minds and hearts.
- We should not wait until we are “old” to begin paring down. When does “old” begin anyway? If we own more than we did last year, we are already in a cycle that promises to create a headache for us and/or our loved ones later. One of the signs of youthfulness is being able to adapt to change. Do you feel like there is anything you own that you absolutely cannot give up? If not, consider the reasons why, and then ask yourself if there is an alternative to owning the thing. Perhaps having a digital picture of it would be just as precious. Is it the thing or the memory that it is connected to that makes it most sentimental to you?
It seems so natural that we would simplify our environments as we get older, but it rarely seems to work that way. It’s almost as if age sneaks up on people before they realize their things have buried them, and then they are truly incapable of digging themselves out of the clutter.
Some thoughts to ponder
What are you saving for special occasions? What is more special than today?
If you were to leave your things behind tomorrow, who would be left to sort through them? What kind of situation would they be facing?
What can you convert to a different, more compact form without losing any of its enjoyment?
What are you saving in case you may need it someday? How long have you saved it without having needed it? Knowing that information, isn’t it a good gamble that you could release it and just buy another if you need it someday?
Right now, who would love and appreciate that object that you’ve not been using? Why not give it to them? What sense of joy and freedom might that bring you?
Photo credit: Fyunkie
Tags: cleaning, cleanliness, clutter, Home, Organization, simplicity, things, voluntary simplicity
