How Not to Dispose of Unwanted Clutter

Anytime I mention buying something, my husband will say, "It's fine to buy it. But where are you going to put it?" I'll admit that in 50 years of marriage we've collected a lot of, well, junk. Much of it came from his parents, and mine. None of that stuff would be worth a nickel if we tried to sell it, but there's always sentiment to consider.

I should ask him the same question when he starts to buy something. But he seldom buys anything except essentials, like laptops and iphones. I keep bringing in junk like bedding, towels, and cooking equipment.

Now I'm not one of those women who thinks every square inch of wall space has to be covered with something colorful. You can actually see the dust on the top of most of our tables, while some of my friends have so many trinkets on theirs that you couldn't find a place to lay down a hearing aid battery.

As I said, we both, like most people our age, have some things we've kept for sentimental value, and they tend to accumulate. We kept things for years thinking our kids would have a use for them someday. But they don't want the old wooden potty chair, high chair, or their first bicycle. Their old toys are no longer loved and wanted. Quilts used to be a much-desired commodity to be passed down from mother to daughter. My kids prefer blankets, and don't really care about my mother's handmade quilts.

We both have our old bicycles, dating from the 40's and 50's, stashed far back in the attic of our storage building. We can't throw them out because they have sentimental value. I guess the younger generation just isn't sentimental.

We also have everything left from my husband's parents that his siblings left behind after taking what they wanted. And my husband can't bring himself to dispose of it.

For the life of me, I can't imagine how you can be sentimental about old rusty chains, plow points, and other equally worthless landfill that my husband's dear old dad left behind. I loved him, too, but I can't see where it would be at all disrespectful to throw out most of that junk.

On the other hand, I have a lot of old dishes from both his mother and mine. The bulk of them are cracked and chipped, and one of these days I'm going to toss them out. But for now, those worthless ones are taking up space in the attic. The rest of them, based on the merits of being unchipped, uncracked and quite old, might be worth a few dollars, sentiment aside.

Unfortunately, through the years since his parents died in 1973, and mine in the 90's, I've forgotten from which mother any particular dish came. So much for sentiment.

We have most of a closet filled with old computer paraphernalia. I can't throw it out because I don't know what's worth anything, and he won't get rid of it for fear he might need it again. There's even a roll of paper from an ancient fax machine. Anyone want it?

I have really nice clothes dating back to the 70's that I hate to part with, because I keep hoping that one day I might lose enough weight to get back into them. I found some old dresses of mine safely packed away in the attic, kept for sentimental reasons. My mother made them for me. Now I might get one leg in them in the space where my body used to fit. But I can look at them and see my mother bent over the old machine, lovingly sewing every stitch. Trashing them would seem like trashing my mother.

I also have my dad's steel tape, as good as it was before it broke and he welded it back. His favorite purple shirt is hanging in my closet. I kept some of his patched overalls and a tattered jacket he used to wear while working outside. I can almost smell the oil and gasoline on them from when he wore them while fixing lawn mowers. Seeing them brings to mind my dad's gnarled old hands, with black grease imbedded in the skin and under the nails, evidence that he had worked for years past his ability to do so, scratching out another dollar to take care of those he loved. How could I throw away such memories?

A sampling of my husband's old Post Office uniforms fills up another box. When he retired, they gave him the old leather mail bag he had used when he first went to work for the Post Office in 1957. At least they know how to dispose of stuff they no longer use.

I have more books than some small-town libraries. Most of them came from sales of one kind or another, or from the 10-cent box of old volumes at the local library. I thought that once I got old and feeble and unable to do anything else, I might have time to read them. It never occurred to me that my eyes might go along with or even before the rest of my body.

Actually, I don't really need but three books. By the time I've read the last one of the three, I've forgotten what the first one said, so I can start all over.

So a while back, I decided to start culling the books. I threw out about four of them that I knew were totally outdated and would never be needed again. I also bagged up a few to try to give away. Somehow that bag wound up in the back of the truck with things we both agreed we could stand to part with.

The next day I found that bag back in the house. My husband explained that he felt sure I would like to keep the books. I never would have missed them. I keep asking myself, does he want stuff cleared out to make room for incoming, or doesn't he?

Last week I decided that the time had come that I must clean out the attic. I don't want to die and leave the mess for the kids to have to go through, although I think it would be easier for them to do than it is for me. Nothing there is worth a cent to them and they could chuck it all out and laugh while doing it, while I agonize over ever decision.

The attic had become so cluttered and crowded that it was unsafe to set foot up there. My husband cheered as I tossed box after box and bag after bag off the upper deck and near the truck, to be hauled off. Some of the boxes and bags even had something in them. It was mostly stuff that had so deteriorated in the heat of the attic that it fell apart when picked up.

I have had an old doll since I was five years old, and it has been virtually dead and decomposed for at least 40 years. But to me, throwing out a doll or photos of people borders on voodoo.

While cleaning the attic, I found that doll again, carefully packed away in a box and wrapped in an old scarf. I took it out and looked at it carefully. The cloth body has long since been reduced to shreds. The legs and arms hang by a thread. The head, legs, and arms are made of some kind of fiber, and covered with perhaps some early kind of plastic, known back then as "celluloid" and pronounced "sittleoid" by most people I ever heard try to pronounce it.

The extremities all look like they had been severely sunburned, with the skin peeling off in huge clumps. The poor thing was just so sad to look at that I decided the time had come when I must be strong and just let it go. I should have gone out back, dug a deep hole, and given it a decent burial. But I didn't really have time to do that, and besides, there was snow on the ground. So I carried it down, in its box, and carefully placed it on top of the other trash in the back of the truck.

The next day before he hauled the stuff away, my husband told me very gently that he had something to ask me. He said, "I see you've thrown your doll away, and I wonder if you really want to do that. I'm afraid you might be sorry later and wish you hadn't done it."

So I told him to set it aside and I'd take it back to the attic.

I give up. We both want things culled out, but neither of us has what it takes to do it. If the kids don't want our house enough to go to the trouble of emptying it out, they can just say so and we'll leave it to someone who likes junk more than we do.