My mother saved everything in our house. I mean *everything*: when she had a new bathroom suite fitted, she made the workmen put the old fixtures in the basement in case they came in useful one day. Along with the jam jars, coffee jars, my 30-year-old clothes, the unreadable books (water damaged), the hangers, the stacks of magazines from which she was going to take illustrations to make collages on basement walls, spare bits of plasterboard. Everything. Then there were four bedrooms full of stuff, my sister's old clothes, our schoolbooks, her old clothes, broken fishtanks (the glbutt would be useful, or perhaps she'd make a terrarium). Last year, she had to move house. Just next door, a house the same size, but she wanted to do it without help (more reasons than I care to discuss). She started packing her home into black plastic rubbish bags, carrying them next door, stacking them and returning for more. And became more and more and more depressed by the weight of her belongings, in every sense the weight of her past.
My brother went to visit for a week or so to help. He ended up staying 3 weeks and, while he did so, he talked to her about why she was keeping all this stuff. Was it really necessary? Surely some of it, perhaps the jars (was she really going to make that much marmalade next winter?) could be taken to the tip. Slowly, patiently, he coaxed her to relinquish some of her stuff, her hoard of history and intentions. I rang the day after he'd left and she told me she'd taken another load of stuff to the tip. "It's wonderful", she said. "I feel so much lighter".
Try it? :-))
regards sarah
-- Think of it as evolution in action.
