Don't Interrupt your Children's' Timeline to Deal with your Clutter

Is it fair to make your children deal with what you chose not to?

How many of you have experienced the passing of a loved one and spent days, weeks dealing with their belongings left behind?

Did you talk/hear about all the treasures found? I suspect you talked/heard of the stress of having to coordinate the family, the guilt of throwing so much away because of the timeline to get the house on the market, or rearranging vacation times to use the time now for this. The facts are real, I see it every day on community sites, the stress people are dealing with when a loved one leaves them with all their stuff. I have had many clients with their parents stuff stored in their basements and garages.

We can’t keep it all!

There were a few things that impacted me at the beginning of my clutter liberation journey. One was a little wee article about this older woman that had dealt with all of her stuff and left her family with only a box of her most treasured possessions to disperse amongst themselves when she went into a home. Another was a true story of a German woman in the 1980s that went to live with her African husband in his tribal home. Her mother-in-law owned a skirt, blanket, a pot, and one drinking utensil. When she had company she borrowed from a neighbour.

Now to be clear I do not live as simply as these two women, but I do value that they did not have all these possessions at the end of their life that need to be disposed of by someone else while they were in the midst of grieving.

Our children will not want 99.9% of our stuff, they have their own. As parents, we are supposed to create a platform for them to leap from, not a trap of our possessions.

Can you begin to really look at what is in your home and what you can let go of now? You can ENJOY the freedom of less and give the gift of less for someone else to deal with later.

• Go through your photos, ditch the negatives, toss the landscapes, pets and long-forgotten faces

• Review your linens and gift, donate, sell what you are not using currently

• Coral all your papers and keep the treasures, shred, compost or recycle what others will not need to see

For more ideas google Swedish Death Cleaning :)

~Diane

To start your journey slowly, try the monthly Clutter Hunt