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Good luck. Mona
My dad used to always say to me.."you come home and we clean out the garage"...in his german commandering accent...well I used to say..yeah okay you just tell me when you want to do it. He would never take me up on that..he's been gone 11 years. So now and then I clean up more and more and more, either trash or thrift shop gets stuff. I have always cleaned out my stuff, even when I was young I would clean out my desk or closet...and have been doing so. I still have a lot of stuff to clean out...but at least I don't hang on to stuff and now even see more the reason not to hang on to everything for cleanliness and safeness!!!!!
I've come to see it's about hanging on to the person they were, the dreams they had. (Don Aslett, the famous writer on decluttering and home cleaning, has a lot to say about how anyone at any age is susceptible to this mental trap.) If the piles of references and drafts from his dissertation are gone, did he really get that degree? If her boxes of costume jewelry are empty, did she really used to dress up glamorously and host great dinner parties? Even if the whatever hasn't been touched in years, just knowing it's there can be comforting.
My dad resisted mightily when my mom started decluttering by selling books they'd reviewed years earlier (and never read again) on Amazon, and would indignantly rescue old desk lamps from the thrift shop donation box in the garage and put them back on a shelf. It was much less stressful in the end to get his buy-in, however much persuasion it took, rather than have him suspiciously poking through boxes thinking it was only his stuff being culled. Another way we got buy-in was to encourage him to visit the charity we primarily benefited, which was the local humane society (he has always loved his cats and dogs). Days when the donation went to their thrift shop, we'd stop and play with the cats at the shelter first.
After moving them across country to be closer to us in WA, and downsizing their home by half, we have a lot of frustrating but really very sad conversations about 'I guess you had to get rid of lots of my things' -- when in all honesty, lots of his books and things are still just in boxes in storage, cos they don't fit in the house... Don't yet have the answer to that issue, except to set up shelves in the storage space and unpack it all so he can visit it there!
But that revealed another interesting aspect of keeping stuff: for him, having everything on the same shelves it had been on for years was a memory aid: he has been much more likely to be confused now, because everything is arranged just enough differently in the new house.
Hope this helps a little bit. My experiences with my folks, and friends' parents, have made me determined to do a better job decluttering my own life, now...
I recently was helping mom clean out a few things at her old house in an effort to prepare to move to the facility she is in now, when we ran across a box full of cancelled checks that date back to the mid 70's. My Dad never threw anything away it seems...and mom has taken up her sister's habits of hoarding food. She has a freezer full of stuff that is mostly so old I would not chance trying to eat it. The pantry was full of canned stuff, some so old it was pitched when she moved. She still managed to move into her little apartment no less than 32 boxes of Kleenex. You think there might be some issues there? :) Anyway, I can hardly wait to hear what my stepchildren say about me when I get that age and they are trying to help me move...
Tom
Somethings got pitched....like a plastic bag of toilet paper squares from different places in Europe...baskets of rocks from a trip out west...clippings from newspapers from years ago that she might want to read again some year. Yes, we kept the twisties.
When my mom is finally out of that house I will see what is all in the closets and the garage. I don't want to stir up a ruccus either. I am hoping that I find my 14 Barbie dolls and the 5 large Madam Alexandar dolls that were in pristine condition when I packed them at 12 years old. We have a bunch of vintage Avon but when I checked ebay they don't go for much sadly. So the things that she does not readily see I get rid of and it is so much nicer to find things when you need it.
A couple tips: I took books over to our local library and used clothing and appliances, etc. to the local Salvation Army ( they will take almost anything)-----This was OK with my father because it meant "finding a home" for his belongings.
Yes, Pamela, I know what a moo-moo is and after your mom got through with you, I'm sure you'll never forget what a moo-moo is either! ;-)
For years I've been trying to clean up my moms room well by cleaning I mean eliminating. Each and every time I go through things she says the same thing over and over...."no that's good I want to keep it". I know people will say to secretely get rid of it ie give to charity, local rummage sale, donations to the church, or the local womens shelter. You could do that if you like but sooner or later that parent will ask about the very item that has been donated and if you say you haven't seen it, this will cause more anguish and will constantly work on your paren'ts mind.
About a year ago my mom had a bad accident on one of her moo-moo's, (please tell me you've heard of this dress term). Well rather than attempting to wash it, I threw it away. For a while mom didn't mention it and I thought she'd forgotten about it. Then one day she said she couldn't find it. She must have said it about 5 times so I told her that I'd thrown it away. Awwwww Lawddddd what did I say that for. She kept telling me over and over that I had no right to throw it out and that was her favorite moo-moo. Honestly if she hadn't had this stroke she would probably still be asking about it.
Now she has been looking for a black jogging suit. Somehow someone found the bottom however the top is still missing and I swear she bugs us and bugs us about that jogging top. This just happened since the stroke and we just cannot live that down. Both my sister and myself tore her closet apart and still couldn't find it. We don't know where it is, and neither does she but we never hear the end of it. Where oh where has my jogging top gone, oh where oh where could it be???? remember that song.
I don't know whether this helps, probably not but simply put they just want to keep those things around.
Sorry.....
If someone comes up with ideas, I'm-a-listening too....