Sentimental Clutter

Merriam-Webster defines hoarding as the compulsion to continually accumulate a variety of items that are often considered useless or worthless by others accompanied by an inability to discard the items without great distress.

A second definition is a temporary board fence put about a building being erected or repaired. As a wordsmith, I thought was interesting. But I digress.

Sometimes it’s not a compulsion to accumulate, but simply the fact you’ve lived a long time that you have so much stuff.

We’ve downsized multiple times and decluttered regularly. Still, there are personal things I just can’t bring myself to discard.

Like the antiques, my husband and I acquired over the years. Though, with each downsize/declutter pieces and collections have been passed on or sold.

That’s as it should be.

Our children’s generation and their children’s generation aren’t “into” antiques like we were. (Probably because they grew up with the old stuff.)

Their lives, their choices.

But if looking at the contents of our China cabinets or setting a hot cup of tea on a Victorian marble-top table makes us happy, we’ll hang onto the old stuff.

Things that cause the most trouble when decluttering are the things with sentimental attachments. Things like a metal stand hubby made in his metal shop class or the little bowl I made in my wood shop class.

Back when we were in school, Texas girls and boys were required to take home economics and shop classes as electives.

Even if your master plan was college, before you graduated, you had to take both classes.

Both pieces have traveled with us through all our moves to ten different states, some states more than once.

His stand sometimes held a circular piece of plywood to be a little side table. For the last thirty-plus years, it’s held our gazing ball in the garden. My dish has always held safety pins and loose buttons. That’s where it is today.

Does that make us hoarders or collectors of sentimental clutter?

Neither, I say. Both objects bring back thoughts of how we met in high school.

The boxes of baby clothes, military uniforms, high school letter sweaters, my grandmother’s handsewn dresses, and his mother’s handsewn quilts stored in the barn — well, those might count as sentimental hoarding.

But again, I can’t get rid of them, because each article recalls fond memories of times past.

And that’s the real reason I keep things, I mean hoard things, the memories. Don’t we all?