Several of my relatives and friends are in the process of cleaning out a parent’s home. Some have tragically lost their aged parents, and some are rearranging living situations to accommodate medical needs. In each situation, however, there is an overwhelming factor: Each of them are dealing with a house stuffed with … stuff.
No one knows what most of this stuff is or why their parents have kept it all these years. While the adult children are trying to work through grief or the medical needs of their parents, their focus is blocked by piles of possessions. One of my elderly relatives had seven large dressers and desks lining the walls, each stuffed to the brim, in her bedroom alone. Another kept stacks of store receipts from the ’70s, graduation napkins, and untold totes of decorations stored away amongst torn old clothes and boxes of dishes. Another had four garbage bags’ worth of literal trash in a single TV cabinet, one of three identical cabinets in the room.
Suffice it to say, our Silent Generation senior citizens have a stuff problem. And unfortunately, it looks like the Baby Boomers might be following suit. There is a growing movement among retirees called “aging in place.”
Rather than planning to downsize, move in with relatives, or pursue assisted community living, many seniors are investing time and finances into house remodels. Specifically, these remodels focus on making a house wheelchair- and handicap-friendly so that retirees can plan to live out their sunset years in their current dwelling.
This is an understandable desire, of course, but desire does not equal reality. It is difficult and expensive for an aging owner to maintain a family-sized home, and neglected home maintenance has longer-reaching impacts on future generations. On top of that, aging in place also allows seniors to keep large collections of possessions, regardless of whether the clutter is treasured or ignored.
This begs the question, is it healthy for our elderly populations to cling tightly to individual home ownership?
In previous centuries, the elderly did not live alone, nor did they maintain large homes of their own. Instead, intergenerational living was common and practical. Another option was downsizing to smaller living quarters upon children growing up. (This, at least, is still seen today in some rural farmsteads: a retired parent lives in a trailer house near the family home, as a son/daughter takes over the farm and big family house.) Overall, though, history has never reflected today’s trend of senior couples/individuals affording an entire house to themselves. It is a luxury, to be sure! It also comes with unforeseen issues for wider society. Even if we put economical impacts aside, younger generations are paying a heavy price for their parents to live exactly how they want.
Larger-than-necessary homes have clearly become huge storage spaces. The lack of downsizing has created a massive burden on the adult children of senior citizens and created a “Sandwich Generation.” We as a society have an overwhelming number of senior citizens, all of whom deserve care and dignity in their final years. Unfortunately, supersize homes and a lifestyle of saving everything has gone uninterrupted, often for decades. Now, we are seeing this massive accumulation of stuff landing squarely on adult children’s shoulders. And it is a heavy one to bear.
Hoarding is harmful. It sounds harsh, and reality is harsh. Being overly attached to material goods, as well as failing to take responsibility for our own possessions, sets us up for a stressful and burdensome end-of-life stage. There can be many valid reasons why previous generations save and keep everything: frugality, physical disability, mobility issues, mental health issues, a generational mindset difference, etc. But in the end, the result is the same: Senior citizens are leaving houses full of moldering collections for their children to deal with.
How do we break this cycle?
Seniors are already working on it. The Stories We Leave Behind by Laura H. Gilbert approaches hoarding through a legacy mindset, shifting the approach from the stuff to memories. Instead of focusing on saving piles of items, she guides readers through the importance of memories and stories. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson similarly guides readers by focusing on their future passing. It sounds morbid, yes; it also is philosophic, realistic, and generous. Magnusson explains how taking responsibility for our own stuff will remove the burden of hoarding from our children’s shoulders in the future. What parents wouldn’t want to help their children even after death?
Whether we are retirees looking at our golden years, or young parents in the trenches of toddlerhood, all of us can bear several things in mind.
- Stop accumulating stuff. We as individuals need to check our own habits and vices. Are we overly attached to material possessions? Do we have closets or garages with growing piles of stuff we can’t bear to deal with? We can hardly cast blame if we perpetuate the cycle ourselves. Let’s detach from our material goods and instead see virtues, relationships, and memories as the most important things to collect.
- Take responsibility for the things we own. We need to be good stewards of our earthly blessings. At any stage of life, we can deal with the trash, declutter our homes, and organize the storage. Letting go of meaningless items makes space for us to enjoy what actually adds value to our lives. Don’t let that beloved sweater your grandma made rot away in a box. Wear it! Frame that photo and put it on the wall. Use the heirloom china. By clearing our clutter, we rediscover what we actually want to use in our everyday lives.
- Start future downsizing now. Wherever we are in life, we can simplify by thinking ahead. For a young parent like myself, I can limit myself now to one box to hold baby memories–I don’t need to save every onesie. An empty nester might go through years of papers and files now and shred anything not needed. Grandparents can pass on heirloom items now so those items can be enjoyed instead of being lost and tossed in a hoard of clutter later on. We can all start doing small things now in order to make end-of-life changes easier for everybody.
Finally, we would do well to remember what gives possessions value in the first place. Monetary value is not what matters—what we truly care about in the end is memories. Sentimental items are full of memories of the loved one gone, and often they are simply a useful everyday item.
For example, my brother wanted my late grandfather’s work boots, just run-of-the-mill Carhartts Grandpa Ed always wore. My husband has his grandfather’s Liturgy of the Hours prayer book, well-thumbed from daily use. Letters, favorite photos, wedding rings, recipes … these are the real heirlooms, treasured because they bring the clearest memory of the person.
Let’s clear out the clutter so that when we’re gone, our children will be able to focus not on the huge amount of garbage to handle, but rather on these few things that carry meaning and love.
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Image credit: Pexels
17 comments
17 Comments
Chris Hughes
November 13, 2024, 4:28 pmI have had to clean two parent’s homes out now. Rooms and rooms of stuff!. It was a process, but worth permitting my parents to choose for themselves where and how to age. It is arrogant when children think they know best and insist on moves that can be shocking and cruel. We should facilitate their wishes as best as possible.
REPLYAs for myself relative to my children, committing to minimalist living as I age is god advice and I am grateful for the article.
Cadence McManimon @Chris Hughes
November 13, 2024, 6:16 pmThank you for reading!
REPLYEddie coyle
November 13, 2024, 4:34 pmGreat article. My wife and I downsized for three years in anticipation of moving to a new home. I wash shocked how much STUFF we still had! While slowly creating a much more organized home we are continuing to give away or sell even the smallest items. Next up a spare refrigerator and my leasurelly collection of transit tokens
REPLYCadence McManimon @Eddie coyle
November 13, 2024, 6:17 pmYour children will be grateful for your responsibility in the future — thank you for reading!
REPLYDave
November 13, 2024, 4:56 pmExcellent article and good advice. I'm 73 and you're spot on…
REPLYCadence McManimon @Dave
November 13, 2024, 6:17 pmThank you for reading!
REPLYKalikiano Kalei
November 13, 2024, 5:01 pm"Why are seniors downing in stuff?" Regardless of the fact that Americans are the world's most dedicated materialists, that disparagement is still a teensy-tiny bit presumptuous, I think.
Yes, Americans (those who are older the age 25 or so) accumulate far too many 'things' (I wouldn't use the term 'stuff', since not everyone regards their possessions as just so much ‘stuff’), but again, this is the direct result of a corporate commerce system (the United States' 'capitalist democracy'') that has relentlessly squeezed most Americans dry in a death grip since the end of the Second World War. A system that has been co-dependently and involuntarily forced upon us by corporate commercialism, electronic marketing and advertising, etc, etc, et al.
You may thank the elitist upper 1-2% of the monied class for creating a nation of insatiable acquirers of needless things (through their unrelenting socialisations via TV and corporate media) for that, since after all, all marketing and advertising is directly targeted at exploiting lowest common denominator individuals (that element of society P.T. Barnum and H.L. Mencken so aptly lambasted) who are least able to reflect rationally on the difference between ‘wants’ and ‘needs.’ Just as the social media movers and shakers force their puerile admonishments to idolize celebrities and influencers on smartphone addicts (there’s an oxymoronic term, if ever there was one!)
But getting back to the problem of “stuff”, the part of this that ISN’T attributable to the above corporate materialist brainwashing is likely a subconscious effort by older individuals to hold on to an earlier way of life that seemed to have had far more meaning for them than the vacuous, ideologically vapid substitute that has been (and is being) forced upon them.
What you may regard as mere ‘stuff’ probably has immense and complex value for them, as poignant relics of earlier, ‘kinder & gentler’ times. This is not to exculpate and dismiss those who truly suffer from a legitimate hoarding complex (hello, MSD-5!), but it is an established fact that younger individuals (such as yourself and your peer cohorts) evidence almost no interest in or significance to what has gone before (before their personal DoB). History by the definitions of today’s youthful generations, is as obsolete, therefore, as buggy whips and shoe button-hooks, and the resulting ignorance of anything having to do with the past, on their part, is abysmal, to say the least. But it also explains a LOT, too (hello, Geo. Santayana!).
Hence, all that ‘stuff’ in reference has huge meaning for many of them and yes, it’s a real pain in the keester to have to clean out the parents’ cozy (or cluttered) nest after they kick the proverbial bouquet (sic), but everyone who gets older harbors a secret, passionate wish that they were not heading for a 6-foot deep plot. The only problem is that those ‘youngsters’ who most dislike the ‘Elder Stuff Problem’ have not yet confronted the inescapable fact that they TOO shall someday be wearing the same hair-jacket that causes so much twitching and twisting in geezers, since they’re (the youngsters) closer to life’s beginning than its (often) grim and lonely end, a status that fosters awareness myopia!
You must also remember that earlier (there’s that nasty, irritating word again!) eras and epochs had various manifestations of the old Victorian English predilection for ‘collecting’ figuring prominently in their culture. Often a near-mania by the Victorians and pre-Victorians, it is again a part of history most young people either are not aware of or chose to outright reject.
Now lest you think I am myself am an antediluvian old fossil, spiritually and conceptually I am firmly and conceptually on your side in this matter. One of my greatest mentors was German-English economist E.F. Schumacher, whose theories on ‘human-sizing’ life and our material acquisitions were, back in the 70s, absolutely brilliant and prescient well beyond their time.
To summarise, although I largely agree with you from an immediate stance of practical, logical utility, I understand how and why so many ‘geezers’ retreat from the nastiness of modern life into the comforting protective shell of their familiar haunts (replete with all its equally reassuring stash of ‘stuff’) at the end of their lives.
To leave you with a related amusing anecdote, after a lifetime of being, as the German phrase it, a Historiker of aerospace life support technology (and a collector of rare and valuable aviation and space life support artifacts), and wondering how on earth I was going to be able to get ‘rid’ of all those valuable things, I asked my Chinese sister-in-law for her opinion on how to dispose of them prudently. Her response (sweet thing that she is) was, “Get a dumpster and throw everything in it, then have them haul it away to the city dump.” […ummm, OK?]
As always, Cadence, thanks for sharing your stimulating thoughts on this subject w/us! :))
REPLYCadence McManimon @Kalikiano Kalei
November 13, 2024, 6:21 pmThank you for reading and sharing your comments 🙂
REPLYJen
November 13, 2024, 7:39 pmNot all of us older people are hoarders and keep trash in bags stuffed in cabinets. Yes, we have our special things because we’ve been living our lives before, during and after our children, so naturally we’ve held on to things that make us happy…and, quite frankly, this is nobody’s business but our own. If you don’t like it, let us know, and we can just write in our will that our stuff should go to someone else.
REPLYWhen my mom died, my sister, cousin and a few friends got together one evening to organize a big yard sale the next day, but instead, we ended up drinking wine on my mom’s deck and laughing and reminiscing about the past. The next morning, we brought half of her belongings out on the lawn, had a huge unorganized yard sale, gave stuff away to her best friends, called Habitat for Humanity and had them pick up the rest, and were done by 1pm. It was a beautiful day.
Your article sounds a bit stuffy and full of self-importance. I have a wonderful memory of getting rid of my mom’s things and sharing that day with all the special people in our lives. I can attest that it’s all about a good attitude, great friends and a nice bottle of wine. And respect for my mom who lived her life among her treasures, just like she wanted and deserved.
Cadence McManimon @Jen
November 13, 2024, 9:34 pmThank you for sharing your experience, and thank you for reading!
REPLYKalikiano Kalei@Jen
November 14, 2024, 4:02 pmRighteously spoken, JEN! I agree with most of what you said and the idea of down-sitting with a bunch of good friends and sharing some good (or even bad) wine w/them, whilst 'offloading' things is, IMHO, an excellent karma-generating vibe to go with! Good on ya! :))
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