OPINION

MIKE MASTERSON: Lifetimes of stuff

So what about all the massive amounts of stuff around you that others likely must deal with one day?

I’ve reached the place (after seven decades of living and accumulating and storing and rearranging the tons of whatever helps define my life) where most of us arrive as we approach our expiration dates. I have a house filled with chairs, sofas, beds, tables, chairs, television sets, lamps, kitchen necessities, and walls filled with paintings, photographs and plaques.

Thus, the question arises: What’s going to happen to it all when I’m gone?

I seriously doubt, in fact I am certain that, except for a few mementos and treasured items that touch them sentimentally, my grown children with homes of their own and lots of their own stuff don’t want it. They really don’t need to sort through things that are years old and probably considered somewhat dated. Plus, I don’t want to dump that responsibility on them.

How many of today’s generation want their parents’ china cabinet, king-sized bed, enormous polished buffet, or that glass cabinet containing personal mementos and knick-knacks?

These all represent my personal history and tastes.

I study my office walls at home and understand how all these personally appreciated framed accolades spanning almost 50 years practicing this craft mean nothing to my children or grandchildren. They are valued artifacts of my life that will wind up boxed away for decades, never to see daylight again, and ultimately buried in a landfill.

Certainly no one would bid a dime for them at a house auction. Well, unless they might want a ridiculously inexpensive frame for their own pictures and honors.

This is why they have auction companies that specialize in dispersing artifacts from the lifetimes of strangers for a cut of the proceeds. Any final profits from those sales go to the heirs, allowing them, in return, to purchase more stuff they want or need (but mostly just want). Then at one point in the not-too-distant future, they, too, will find themselves pondering the same question: What happens to all this when we’re gone?

It’s all pretty much an endless cycle of acquiring stuff only to shed it.

During moves over the years, I’ve called many local charities with trucks to collect lots of furniture, clothes and you name it. I just didn’t feel like preparing, then girding my loins, for a hectic weekend garage sale where so much of the stuff would be covered with quarter and 50-cent stickers. This kind of “let’s just be done with all this” attitude becomes more prevalent with age.

So does the popularity of downsizing. Many who spent their active achieving seasons climbing career and financial ladders to wind up in large homes with their children come to appreciate the appeal of more intimate and efficient houses as the kids leave and they age toward retirement.

An article by Erin Rooney Doland headlined “10 Ways to Let Go of Your Stuff” offered some suggestions for those reluctant to part with most of all of it. Here are a few.

First, Doland says, “tear down the museum,” meaning every trinket saved from your past. Take pictures … then let them go to make room for today and what future remains. Life, being a river, is best traveled by going with the flow.

Next, she says we are best served by assessing the realistic value of everything we want to unload by selling, including that obsolete computer purchased for hundreds 20 years ago, which today is worth next to nothing. Do we really need and use that second slow-cooker or the old lamps in the closet?

Doland writes that a person reaches the age where hopefully they understand themselves better. That means unless one is an avid reader, obsessed with exercise, or loves to bake and cook unique dishes, the wise thing to gain freedom from attachments is to focus on who you are today and where your true interests lie.

Then there are all those things we intended to repair. “Most of the broken things I had brought with me were shoes. Heels or straps had come off, and I was convinced I would someday have them repaired,” Doland writes. “My husband held the shoes up in front of me, pair by pair, and asked two questions: ‘If you saw these shoes in a store today, would you buy them?’ and ‘If you say yes, how much would you pay for them?’

“In all but one case,” she writes, ” I admitted that I wouldn’t buy the shoes again.” As for her broken-soled red kitten heels, “The amount I was willing to pay was less than the cost of having them fixed.”

I’m betting that’s the case for most readers with shoes and clothes they can no longer wear yet cling to nonetheless because they once liked them. That’s where the “one day I’ll get rid of those” philosophy comes into play. But one day never arrives.

Finally, Doland writes that when her grandparents died, she inherited a large collection of rusty knives, a warped cookie sheet and her grandmother’s beloved copper bracelet. She said she held onto those things for over a decade before realizing if her grandparents were still alive, they already would have replaced the cookie sheet and knives.

She says she kept the bracelet for sentimental reasons and even wears it today.

Yes, friends, this time thing ticks relentlessly onward, pausing for none of us. The best I can do is accept that fact in the same way I believe in gravity, then alter my attitude to best fit life today rather than the yesterdays already far downstream.

Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist. Email him at [email protected].

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