Clean Up Now so Your Kids Don’t Have to Later

Recently, both Steve and I texted each other the same story from The Washington Post simultaneously: “These boomers tried caring for parents. Now they’re tidying up to spare their kids.”

The gist of the story was this: parents are cleaning up their accumulated stuff now to spare their kids from having to do it later. They’re also making elder care and end-of-life plans.

Closing down a parent’s life after death is overwhelming. Equally so when parents can no longer care for themselves.

I saw a complementary headline in Southern Living: “The Simple Question that Makes Letting Go of Stuff so Much Easier.” In a poll taken of professional organizers, each expert posed a different question. Find the one that will best motivate you. For example: Why am I keeping this? OR Would I buy this today?

What to Clean Up Now

I’m relying on Steve to clean up the paperwork. I’m working on cleaning up my stuff.

I’m examining my life as I live it today, and asking myself, what do I no longer need? Here are some places where I can begin to make a dent:

• Work clothes: office attire, shoes, and purses. Donate to organizations like Dress for Success or resell on line or at local resale shops.
• Cookbooks: of hundreds of cookbooks purchased for my business, many are unused and realistically, will never be used as I grow older. Donate cookbooks to your library (ours will resell to fund library programs). Or contact a local culinary school. Online booksellers like Thriftbooks will buy books for a few dollars, but it seems hardly worth the effort.

• Other books: We have many fiction and nonfiction titles in bookshelves throughout the house. At this point in my life, the ones I haven’t read, I’ll probably never read because I’m reading e-books and listening to audiobooks instead. And of the ones I have read, I doubt I’ll read again. I’ll save only the ones with which I have a true emotional connection.

Digital Photos

They take no physical space, but digital photos need cleaning out, too. Because no one wants to scroll through thousands of your photos to find the best ones.

I have 58,244 items in my photo library, primarily of my two grandchildren, for this blog, from vacations, and for social media posts. Editing photos for deletion takes concentration. A good time to do this is on a plane or car trip.

Then, there are all the photo albums and loose prints we all have to tackle. I’m still trying to find time to research a proper flatbed scanner and scan old photos for cloud storage.

Regarding what photos to keep or toss, my guideline is, if I don’t know the person depicted, it goes in the bin. Unless, of course, they’re beautiful photo portraits of ancestors. AI can help you scan for locations and approximate dates to learn more about the photos.

The one time when taking more photos makes sense is to catalog items you love that you will be parting with during your clean up process. It’s easier to let go if you have a photo remembrance.

Grandkids’ Toys

Through the years, the grandkids began to outgrow the toys in our family playroom. One by one, we’ve given them away–it’s a wistful exercise. The hardest to part with was a Fisher Price kitchen set that held special memories.

In the end, I gave it to a grandma friend. I knew Rosemary would give our kitchen a good home. I featured Rosemary on “Call Me Grandma!” last year as a long-distance grandparent who shared great ideas for bridging geographical distances between grandparents and grandkids. She sends me photos occasionally–recently of her new grandbaby–enjoying the kitchen.

What I’m not Ready to Toss

While I’m trying to reduce my possessions, I’m not ready to give up the things I’m still using, even if my family will be tasked with dealing with them later.

• Several sets of fine china and silverware: I’m still setting them out for special family dinners and for entertaining, although I’m doing less of the entertaining as I get older. Every time I use them, I’m reminded of being in my 20s, living in New York City, and learning to entertain as a young bride.

• Contingency clothes: I have an old, warm parka I continue to save for an emergency, such as a major earthquake, when I might need it in an evacuation. We also keep emergency earthquake supplies.
• Craft supplies: I’m keeping these until I can no longer do craft work. Later, they can be donated to schools, libraries, or an organization like SCRAP.
• Christmas ornaments–we have enough for an 11-foot tree and a smaller children’s tree, gathered lovingly through the years. One day, I’ll not be up to the task and will have to downsize to a smaller tree. Our children don’t want to acquire so many ornaments so in preparation for when the ornaments will get dispersed, I created a book of photos that tell our ornament stories.

Big Supply, Little Demand

As we boomers get older, we are finding our children don’t seem to want extraneous stuff in their homes. They consume books, music and movies digitally; they don’t need our collection of CDs, DVDs, and books. They don’t have room for our photo albums.

Their lifestyle is casual. Fine china–especially those that need hand washing or silverware that requires polishing–have no place in their home.

So, I’m resigned that what was precious to us in our day has become an albatross today. But that’s okay. We enjoyed our possessions while we had them and when it’s time to let them go, we’ll know they had a good run in enriching our lives.

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