Clutter misery http://ohioriverlife.blogspot.com/
by Liz LundbergI went back home to spend the New Year's Day and Dad's birthday with my parents. Normally I wouldn't write about the same stuff, but since I "broke the story" about finding an old copy of the Pledge of Allegiance, I thought I might follow up with a tale about cleaning my mother's closet.
First of all, you need to know that my mom is a clutter bug. I won't say she is the worst clutter bug in the world, because she has not died beneath her litter. But she's not dead yet, so time will tell. She sends five bucks to every charity that asks for money, and in order to keep her on the money pipeline, they send her note cards, calendars, address labels, envelope seals, rosaries, medallions, refrigerator photo frames, magnets, prayers and other assorted bric-a-brac.
Someday when the last hose is finally exhausted and the insurance company declares the house a total loss, my mother will heed our words about the firetrap she inhabits, but in the meantime, I offered to help her organize this mountain of clutter. She suggested we begin organizing the bathroom instead. Well, it's a start, I thought, so up we went to the loo.
We discovered a bottle of Wheat Germ Oil & Honey Shampoo from the seventies and a jar of Vaseline from the sixties. I was a teenager when it was new! I asked her if maybe we could try selling it on eBay with the suggestion that the form of the Virgin and child had been gouged into it and had remained unmolested for over twenty years. "Sure enough, there's her head, mom!" I exclaimed. She laughed and laughed. "OK, so toss?" "No, your father can use it to lubricate things." She set the petroleum aside.
There was a lot of used BIC razors, some of which we (I) tossed. "Most," directed mom, were "still good," so back they went into the pile of razors. There was a literal cornucopia of miniature motel shampoos and conditioners. Some were used. The bottles had many different shapes. The pettiest ones had pink fluid in them and were from the Grosvenor Hotel in the U.K., but they had been opened, and the fluid had turned off-pink to yellow around the upper edge. I said, "No good, toss." To which she countered, "But once they're empty we might need the bottles."
There had to be thirty bottles sitting in front of me. I don't think my 76-year-old mom and my 82-year-old dad can travel enough to get rid of all the bottles they have, much less need the empties anytime before they die. This fact never crossed her mind. Like the banker who tried to sell my grandmother a sixteen year CD when she was 92: What was he thinking?
We managed to separate the full bottles from the empty ones and place the full ones in a pretty box with some other attractive soaps and lotions—for when guests come. We agreed to place the used ones in a box to go to the rummage sale. Nobody will use the remaining soap in these bottles, but maybe they would empty them to use as travel bottles themselves. That way, I thought, they're at least almost out of the house. There were two other bottles that I admit I was hoping we'd keep. They contained, respectively, tincture of merthiolate and dose of castor oil. Both looked as though they might have been carried by Florence Nightingale.
This was merely the episode of the bottles. Over the course of this adventure together, we had numerous episodes and discussions about each and every item we pulled from under the sink and over the sink. We simplified the arrangement this junk, although most of the junk that would never be used again somehow survived. For example, there were pieces of soap so hard that they could repel water. We should have given those to dad to fix the roof with, but like mom says "soap is soap," and we had to keep every chip and chunk of that shale.
At the end of all the episodes—of the bottles, Band-Aids, gauze, sample packs, floss, thermometers (three more than have been used in the last ten years, even though we 'thought we only had one') eye drops, boric acid, Bacitracin (remember Bacitracin?) cream and assorted pain killers—we had reduced the volume by a whopping one tenth.
Had this been my project I would have shut my eyes and tossed all of it out except the Band-Aids, those two refugee bottles from Charlie Company, and the unopened hotel bottles. It's always easier to throw away somebody else's stuff, but by then I was contemplating burning down my own house and beginning anew—especially knowing that I carry the gene for clutter mania. The whole thing had ceased to be funny. It was now morbid.
Imagine going home only to discover that you can't sit next to your mother on the couch because three fourths of it is blanketed in newspapers, magazines, lists, date books, fiction, nonfiction, crossword puzzles, knitting needles, yarn, and a pair of socks with holes in the heels and toes. You might feel a bit unwelcome. I know
it's not her intention, but the silent communication is: "You're welcome, but not welcome enough for me to actually make space for you here." My parents' house has more books, more fountains of wisdom than the Library of Congress, but there's literally no place to sit down and read. Needless to say, they rarely entertain. Mom's computer is in her "shop"—a used book store that supplies major outlets like Abe Books and Amazon. This store, too, is packed six high and two deep with books. To use the computer you have to squeeze in between a Yertle the Turtle tower and a box. The tiny space hollowed out of the work area for the mouse is almost too small to fit your hand, let alone to move the mouse. The bookcases are stacked high with heavy hardbacks, and I fear someday having dig out my buried and broken mother from beneath these shelves. That she has osteoporosis improves the possibility.
There must be twenty of those two-handled tote bags lining the entryway when you walk in the front door of the bookshop. For a year mom couldn't find her digital camera. I moved one of the tote bags. It was underneath. This is what I'm talking about, but there is a great deal of emotion tied up in all of this stuff. For me it represents anger and hostility. We love mom and we hate her. There isn't anything we can do about it, but to hear my father say, "When she dies I'm having a bonfire," I wonder if it's a celebration he's secretly hoping for. I had always thought of my parents as an inseparable couple, a wonderful team perpetually in love. We never saw them angry at each other when we were kids. But in this one compulsion of Mom's I see the sinister destruction of their devotion. The only truly thriving inhabitants of the house are the plants and the fruit flies that circle like a living carousel above a bowl of rotting fruit. This will not do for me. I cannot stand the feeling that my beautiful parents are going to be buried with animosity between them instead of tranquil earth, or that their ashes will cause toxic waste because of her contempt and his anger. I want to fix this before it's too late.
The pile-up is not all her fault. My father shoulders the burden of his own martyrdom. The end of every sentence is followed by a description of a limiting factor linked to the words "your mother." The truth is that she's not his limiting factor; he is.. But as long as he blames her, nothing can change. His beautiful house remains a fire trap and an obstacle course. And he remains the ineffectual patsy, unable (or unwilling) to save his wife for her own sake.
The psychological part comes from growing up in the Great Depression, she says. Their house was small. One had only a corner in which to place her precious few books, papers and toys. She loves the idea that she now has infinite space to put everything. She loves the infinite ownership, too. She's a clutter miser.
Why keep all this stuff? Why not give it all to the needy, like the good Christian she works so hard to be? Well, it might be worth something someday. Deep inside, her unwillingness to let go of this dubious wealth is a fear of not having enough, that someday this will be needed, like Judgment Day. You know it's coming, and must be prepared. But that's something beyond reality. Clutter is not good for the psyche. At some point, the psychological need to "unload" one's physical detritus (and all the emotions linked to it) should kick in against the defenses of clutter misery.
Mom isn't any different than smokers with respect to addiction, except it's a different type of coffin nail. I see her in myself clearly at times, so I know what I am talking about; it saps our life energy. It's only visible in her case if one visits the house. Instead, at her advanced age, she has remedied that by always going out and never having guests. She's off on her lay ministry, ministering to the locals with her lay minister friends, while dad stays home and watches the beast.
