Discarding Anything — Not in My Wheelhouse

Delane Melton

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The Southern Voice

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5 min read

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Jul 13, 2024

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If you want to know how many possessions you have, many of which you may have forgotten, pack up for a move. The boxes in our attic alone were mind-boggling. My husband used to remind me that one more item stored in the attic might break through and bring it all tumbling down. I didn’t believe how close to an attic-collapsing disaster we were until we moved about 7 years ago from a house we had lived in for over 45 years.

In the spirit of transparency, and in case you didn’t know, I am a clean, organized hoarder. I can’t throw anything away, especially if it has a sentimental attachment, and everything has a sentimental attachment, no matter how farfetched the connection might be!

How could anyone throw away a dress from their first formal 7th or 8th grade dance in the early 1960s? The dress size, like my weight back in the day, would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of negative numbers. It’s definitely a keeper!

Or how about the mounted “first” fish our sons caught when they were little boys; those are also keepers even though John and Derrell are now over 50 and don’t want to see them, much less take them home! One could never part with the little Barbie purse from the first year of production … even though the doll was given away many years ago. All of these things are treasures, and I should not feel guilty keeping them!

I don’t think it’s just a Southern thing!

I’m happy to donate or give my stuff to someone in need. But just throwing some non-food items in the trash, especially something that still has use, is an impossibility for me. Packed away are suits I wore every day to work; I retired fifteen years ago when my middle was more diminutive.

I found a full set of disposable plasticware and tablecloths for picnics on the ground, which were bought 35 years ago when we could still stand up if we found ourselves on the ground. I have over 100 old pillowcases of all sizes from our house and those of our mothers. I think you get the picture.

I can’t tell you how many times I have celebrated my resolve when I finally tossed an item in the garbage. But the celebration is brief. Over and over, I find myself almost falling head-first into the garbage can, digging the item out and washing off the spent coffee grounds that landed on top of my latest short-term garbage donation.

Our collections include the usual things accumulated over 57 years of marriage and the sentimental treasures that came to live at our home after our parents passed away. After dispersing a ton of things, we still have three houses of stuff packed into one household.

My dad was not a collector, so there were just a few items to sift through when he passed away at 50. Going through his personal items, I found that the most profound possession was his wallet. Profound for me because it was almost always with him. It was old and had conformed to his body as he drove those big trucks for years, carrying it in his back pocket. After he passed away, I carefully rubbed the smooth, worn leather covering, hoping to feel just a trace of my dad’s fingerprints.

My mom, on the other hand, left a house filled to the brim with all sorts of things when she departed this world at the age of 91. She wasn’t a collector but found it impossible to throw something away that someone might need. I wonder if organized hoarding runs in the family. It took a while to disburse her many sentimental treasures to family and friends and then to find a place for the remainder at my house.

Like us, our parents didn’t have fancy, expensive things, but the items they chose to keep were precious to them, and now they are to us as well. I read about people who find valuable stuff in the attic when someone dies: books, toys, 1950s kitchenware, and china (that can’t go into the dishwasher), possessions that are supposed to be worth a fortune. Maybe the stories of discovering valuable items are true, but that has not been our experience.

There is an organizational effort called “The Swedish Death Cleaning or Death Cleanse,” which is defined as a method of decluttering your home before you die to lessen the burden of your loved ones after you pass. The process should begin no later than when you reach age 65. I’m more than 10 years late.

There are different methods to accomplish this cleansing act. One instructs us to put things in 4 piles; the first pile holds the things we want to keep, the second should only include the things we wish to give to family and friends, the third pile is designated as charitable donations and the last pile is defined as, belonging in a dumpster.

My first pile would fill a small warehouse. Most of the items in my second pile, dwindled into other piles when family and friends politely refused my sentimental generous offerings. Charities declined to take much of my third pile and the contents of the fourth pile, “stuff to be thrown away”, would fit into a shoebox. I subscribe to the old adage, as soon as you throw it away, someone will need it. I don’t think this is what the Swedes had in mind.

When we married, we were only 19 years old, and we had nothing. If someone gave us a cast-away or a would-be-charitable donation, we were thrilled to get it. The younger generations feel differently. Over the past years, our collection of things that most charities would reject has outgrown our house. If I don’t clear this stuff out, when my husband and I go to our reward, my family will be faced with the humongous task of disbursing everything someone didn’t need after all.

I’m inventing the “Southern Pre-Bereavement Organization, SP-BO,” which I define as leaving everything as is so that your grown children will have even more to remember you by when you pass. Our older son is such a sentimental chap. He told me to forget all the cleaning and organizing because when we pass away, he will rent a very large dumpster and donate my treasures and collectibles to the dump! He has a keen sense of humor, so I’m sure he was just kidding … at least I think he was.