Decluttering for seniors

After my mother died, it fell to me to clear out the house she had lived in for over fifty years. All the cupboards and drawers were crammed full of paper: utility bills, drugstore coupons and greeting cards going back to the 1950s. The bedroom cupboards were full of ratty, worn-out clothes. My parents simply never threw anything out. At first I was appalled. Then I had to confront the fact that apparently neither of them was capable of making the simplest decision about what was valuable and what was not. Finally came the anger, that they knowingly left this mess for their daughter to clean up. It took me months to finish the job, and the experience tarnished my memories of my parents ever after.

So there’s the first good reason to declutter your home: so you don’t dump a big job that’s really your responsibility onto someone else. Don’t leave it to family members, no matter how you feel about them, and don’t leave it to your executor. You don’t want to be remembered as a deadbeat. It’s worthwhile to declutter no matter what your future plans may be. If you’re planning to move into a smaller home, you’ll be ready to roll. If you’re not planning to move, your home will be more spacious, safer and easier to clean. You’ll get a demanding, stressful task out of the way while you can still handle it yourself. And once you’ve gotten rid of things you no longer need, what’s left will be the things that really matter.

So why haven’t you done it already? Well, there’s no question that decluttering is a daunting task. It can be physically demanding: crawling around on the floor, reaching up to high shelves, packing, moving boxes and disposing of them. It’s emotionally demanding too. That stuff is the story of our lives. As we handle our belongings, they will evoke powerful memories. We may find ourselves less and less mobile over time, and take comfort from having our familiar things around us, to help us feel secure, so it may be hard to let them go. The task can seem overwhelming. It takes motivation, stamina, self-discipline and organizational skills. But we have to do it anyway, because we’re not deadbeats.

Luckily, there are lots of guides and checklists to help us declutter our homes, for example here and here. Read through them, make a plan, go slowly. Start small, maybe focussing on an area with no sentimental baggage, like the bathroom. Take time to reminisce. Take pictures of important items or make a journal. If you have valuable items you want to keep, add a memorandum to list them in your will, so your executor knows who they should go to, and there won’t be squabbles. Get help from family, friends or professionals if you need to.

Decluttering is hard work, but it can be liberating. It’s part of healthy aging: letting go of what no longer serves us, and focussing on the life we’re living now.