It is the season of the year to remove summer clothes from closets and dig out winter clothes. The surprise for some is how much clothing we have — far more than anyone needs. To be sure, older people have accumulated clothing and almost everything else over a long period. Moreover, as employment and activity decrease, less of everything is needed, except what is in medicine cabinets.
A common experience is searching in a drawer, box, closet, attic or basement and finding many items, some of which we did not know we had and don’t remember whence those came. Often the search becomes a long trip down memory lane that accompany finding unexpected treasures. We take time to remember the people, times, places and experiences, like odors causing us to imagine tasting mother’s or grandmother’s cooking. We cherish the people for a while and carefully place items back in their resting place until the next time.
Houses are filled with family heirlooms — antique furniture passed down from great-grandparents and parents, jewelry, folk art and china cabinets filled with china and crystal. Also uncovered are treasures of little monetary value, but tokens marking pleasant memories. Never worthy of Antiques Roadshow, we hoard them for our descendants so they might share our memories and pass them along. Mixed in with them are junk, forgotten in dusty corners of attics and basements or in sheds filled with the overflow. Easier to leave there than to clean house. A friend, with a huge house, attic and basement filled to the brim, and a sense of humor, told his two children, “Your mother and I are going to die within a week of each other, and all this will be yours — that is a threat, not a promise.”
The fact is that most children and grandchildren don’t want all that stuff, but are too polite to say so out loud. That’s alright; they don’t need or have use for our stuff. They have their own possessions and treasures, with memories to accompany them. Many have grown up amidst plenty, without penny pinching, lacking memory of poverty or parents who suffered through the depression of the 1930s. Many have modern, even minimalist décor and now face downsizing themselves. Because people live longer, parents don’t pass things along to 40-year-old children, but to those approaching retirement. Therefore, it is understandable that they have no use for most of the stuff, nor room to house it. Perhaps that is the reason that storage facilities grow like topsy around us.
Billy Graham once said that he never observed a Uhaul trailer hooked behind a hearse on its way to the cemetery. In fact, people constitute our legacies — family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, all the people who enrich our lives. When all is said and done, people are most important, not things.
What should we do now? First, shape our wants to be more in line with our needs. Even minimalist often desire the latest, showiest, and most expensive. Those are wants, not needs. Then we can try to meet the needs of those who with the least resources. It might be wise to begin sharing with others the excess from our storage areas while that can be a positive experience rather than just grim necessity. A yard sale and dumpster might lighten our loads.
If one hands down a few good lessons by word and deed, gains the love of family, respect from friends and neighbors, and creates pleasant memories for them, then heirlooms, treasures and trash seem relatively insignificant. One might call that a more abundant life.
Raymond B. Williams, Crawfordsville, LaFollette Distinguished Professor in the Humanities emeritus, contributed this guest column.
