I had an unexpected experience yesterday which took up my entire Saturday. My only meal turned out to be breakfast, and I didn’t go to bed until midnight. My body is not achy in the aftermath, but I did some physical labor which was more intense than usual, and the senior bones and muscles responded with the physical equivalent of “What the heck is going on here?”
I was tasked with clearing out my attic in anticipation of some home improvements. This meant that I would be discarding the pasts of the entire family at once; an accumulated history of every life that was important, including my own.
The idea that “it might become useful someday,” or “you may lose weight and fit into that outfit again” came from the early Boomer mindset, and the “I bought it and I’m holding onto it” part came from my later-era Boomer attitude. When I realized how much stuff was piled up and sitting untouched for a long time, I realized the job was bigger than me.
What does one do in a situation like that? Call in the pros.
I made a consultation appointment with the local clutter experts, expecting them to appear later in the week. Instead, the manager decided to send his two best pros out to my home that very afternoon. All the better, I figured, because I couldn’t adopt a hoarder attitude that would prevent most of the sentimental stuff from leaving the premises.
This is still an issue with the last of the possessive Boomer era; that everything you own has a purpose when it enters your life and may find an afterlife if it comes back into fashion.
It never occurs.
When the pros came with their truck and began pulling out boxes of stuff, I realized that my decision was the right one. The boxes held things that were long past usefulness, including my childhood toys and board games which were missing a piece when they became boarders for us hoarders. They all received their eviction notices. My “keep” pile is small, and my “I’ll check with somebody” pile equally insignificant.
I asked to look at things as they came out, so I could review what was there and find anything that needed retrieval, and there was practically none. A few photos and old papers needing review, a load of old craft supplies, and a few collectibles (including my beloved comics) stayed behind, but in the end my attic filled up two trucks full and a part of a third.
The pros had also not eaten anything, so we spent our Saturday starving and hauling stuff. We may have lost pounds in sweat.
The expense was worth every penny, because my home is now in the state it was in–at least attic-wise–when my parents first saw it back in the 1960s. The only object in the attic was a trunk from the previous owner, a widow who had passed recently, and the next of kin put the home on the market immediately (so much so, in fact, that it had not been staged; a pair of shoes awaited its owners at the empty bedside).
So part of my holiday weekend resulted in upheaval, expense and exhaustion, but I’m content. I’m ready to prepare my home for the next big project. The better it looks, the more free I feel of that Boomer mindset. Hanging onto the past can be a bit overrated.
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