Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
A Math Problem
A lot of people my age talk about being the “sandwich generation,” the group that started families later and therefore find themselves caring for aging parents and children at the same time. People often focus on the time pressures that this generation faces—do I go to junior’s recital or mom’s doctor appointment?—and the money pressures that come with simultaneously paying for nursing homes and college. But I’ve never heard anyone talk about the stuff.
We all imagine that when our kids go off to college we will reclaim our apartments, but that isn’t what I see. I see a summer influx of stuff, which doesn’t all necessarily head back to college with the kid in the fall. They don’t want their dorm rooms to be all cluttered, for heaven’s sake! For the record, the two items I bought for my dorm room, a set of three white-plastic stacking shelves for my toiletries and a white comforter, were both part of my household until 2005. That’s 22 years. I urge you to resist the “Back-to-School” dorm sales at Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond. Send your kids to college with stuff that is already in your house. Don’t buy them more. You know those towels they take to camp? They can take them to college, they won’t die. The goal is to have less in your house, not more. Because the other thing to remember is that they may come home… and while you might be happy to have them, you might not be so thrilled about all that stuff.
At the same time, here comes your parent’s stuff. Maybe they’re downsizing and moving out of the house you grew up in and into an apartment or retirement home, or maybe they have passed away. Either way, it’s going to fall to you and your siblings to either take, give away or throw away many of their possessions. If you’re lucky you’ll be able to do it slowly, with your parents, over time; but often that isn’t the way it works. Letting go of stuff is hard even when everyone is healthy and there is no immediate move planned; it’s hardest when emotions are still high and there is the pressure of a deadline.
I was lucky that my father moved out of the apartment I grew up in when I was relatively young. My older son was 4 years old, and as I helped my Dad divide his stuff up—some to his place in Florida, some to my sister in Montana, and some for me in New York—it occurred to me that everything I took would one day be passed onto my son, and therefore I should never buy another thing!
Really, it’s a math problem. If you end up with your parents’ belongings, and you have your own stuff, and then someday all of your stuff goes to your kid, they are gonna need a big house.
So keep it lean. Don’t buy unless you have to, and when your kid gets his or her first apartment, see if you and your parents can’t furnish it without ever setting foot in a store. You’ve heard “shop your closet,” well this is “shop the basement/attic/kid-who-doesn’t-live-here-anymore’s-room”. Life is full of transitions, and they are all easier when you have less stuff.