When my mother died last year, it fell to me to clear out her home in Co Laois. Sorting through her cherished hats and costume jewellery, I came to question why we hold on to so much stuff.
At some point in most of our lives, we will be faced with the job of arranging what to do with the belongings of a deceased family member. It’s an unenviable task, both emotionally and physically exhausting. When you speak to those who have already been through the process, they will offer sympathetic words and advise you to be ruthless. Yet, as you sort through the loved one’s things, it’s hard not to be drawn into what’s left behind as part of an archival search for meaning.
In the early months following my mother’s death, I had dealt with drawers and wardrobes full of clothes, dutifully doling out special items to those who wanted them and giving rails full of clothing to a local charity sale.
But soon I came across match boxes full of carefully collected sets of buttons and biscuit tins filled with old keys, tiny locks, nails, screws and, yes, more buttons, belt buckles and clasps of all sorts. It felt like I was back in the 1950s.
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The generation of people born in the 1920s and 1930s grew up at a time of scarcity, in the aftermath of Ireland’s revolutionary period. They went on to live with severe rationing during the second World War and after it.
I remember reading once how in the early 1940s, many of the iron railings in England were removed and melted down for scrap metal to produce munitions. These more ornate outdoor railings were often replaced with old metal bed frames. Such reuse was the modus operandi of people living through wars – who learned never to throw anything out that might have another use.
In more recent times of plenty, this strong sense of frugality has been replaced by an overzealous consumer culture, which has little concern for where things end up once they are discarded.
As a result, when you are sorting out things from the past, you quickly realise that there are very few channels through which to pass on items meticulously stored away for some possible future use.
And yet, I find myself carefully going through all this stuff in my mother’s home out of respect for those who kept it. And I am unwilling to pile it all into black domestic waste bags – or, worse again, throw everything into a skip. It’s a bit like panning for gold – most of what I find doesn’t seem to have much value at all. So where should it all go?
For example, keeping so many pens – even those once cherished Parker pens with replaceable ink cartridges – seems anachronistic in an era where branded pens are chucked out once their ink runs out.
On a brighter note, I have found a home for those hundreds of buttons of all shapes and sizes. They have gone to a dressmaker/designer who, hopefully, will create some new costumes where lots of buttons will become a feature rather than a functional part of a garment. I also found a local amateur dramatic society willing to take a selection of hats that my mother wore with pride.
Anyone born in the early part of the last century will also remember the fashion for costume jewellery – beautiful delicate broaches with sprays of flowers, or abstract patterns with semi-precious stones embedded into their design. Or long necklaces with coloured beads of every hue you could consider. These flamboyant and inexpensive jewellery items added a touch of elegance to a dress worn to a dance. But, nowadays, few bother with such accessories. So, some of these boxes will again be stored away as they await an event to share them with the next generation, some of whom may be interested in vintage jewellery.
I will also store away selected chinaware, Waterford crystal glasses and collections of brass ornaments in the hope that someone will be charmed by them in the future. In addition, I will personally cherish a carved wooden plate with an embedded musical box that played a tune as it turned on its pedestal. This was used for home-made birthday cakes when we were children.
But, back to the question at the heart of this redistribution. Why do people hoard such an amount of things in the first place? Is it to remember a time when they were more energised by life? Is it for fear of losing some of their identity as they age? Or, more prosaically, is a reluctance to clear the clutter from the past and live more fully in the present just a form of laziness?
Some mental health experts say that stressful experiences are often the reason for holding on to things that are no longer of use. That stress might be following a death, a divorce or another loss. Those who are socially isolated sometimes hoard more things too.
The Buddhist philosophy – and, indeed, the Christian message – of not putting excess value on material possessions encourages us to live with what we need and no more. If our society functioned in a way that everything had a reuse value – that one person’s trash was another person’s treasure – would this help those to let go of the things they have kept but no longer need?
When war or climate catastrophe forces people to leave home abruptly, they have no choice but to separate themselves from their belongings.
Would your life be any different without them? Would you feel lighter and more able to focus on the present moment instead? Or would you just start collecting all over again?
