Downsizing someone else's stuff

"To everything turn, turn, turn

There is a season turn, turn, turn

And a time to every purpose under Heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose"

      Pete Seeger, 1955. A Byrds hit in 1965

The New Yorker

Many Americans had deferred baby-making during the Depression and World War II. They made up for it in the decade after 1945. Thereby, the Baby Boom, and I am in it. Our generation is in our 70s now. We have been slow to give up political power. We have been slow, too, to give up material wealth. Stuff. 

Look at that refrigerator in the garage. It was probably too good to throw away, but not good enough to use. It is in that no man's land where you store things you cannot use. Maybe someday the owner could take it apart and find out why the compressor motor squeaks. Maybe it could be made into a smoker for BBQ ribs. Maybe some young family could use a gift of an unreliable refrigerator. In the meantime, store it. 

Tony Farrell is a college classmate who has written several guest posts about branding and politics. He had a long, successful career in marketing for The Sharper Image, The Nature Company, and The Gap. Tony Farrell had a rich downsizing experience. 

Guest Post by Tony Farrell

My sister-in-law died recently. Not from Covid, but in this time of Covid, I’ve discovered a way to manage my grief, and I’ll share it.

What you do is, you spend three days a week driving 150 miles, round-trip, for five months, to claw through the dust-covered detritus of a shopaholic hoarder with three hairy dogs crammed into an impassably small house whose only clean space was inside the oven -- because it had never been used. 

Grief is replaced with simmering resentment that such mind-numbing tasks were implicitly assigned to you by the dearly departed because (quite rationally) they didn’t want to do it themselves. 

In this way, grief absolutely evaporates. You’re welcome. 

When my sister-in-law passed, I was obligated to sort through an obscene quantity of shoes, boots and slippers; buckets of earrings; 70 never-used designer purses; dozens of memento totes and soft briefcases from obscure conventions and trade shows; ancient America Online printouts of emailed jokes; so many keyboards, mice and backup discs for long-forgotten software; yellowing issues of People magazine memorializing Lady Di and JFK Jr., and even Patrick Swayze.

Everywhere, I confronted more lame-brained mottos, aphorisms, proverbs, adages, axioms, maxims, dictums and platitudes than you can imagine. Perhaps ironically, an uncomfortable number involved St. Peter at the Pearly Gates: “A Cowboy’s Prayer,” “The Rainbow Bridge,” “The Dog’s Prayer.”

On four different objects were inscribed, “It’s not the number of breaths you take, but the number of moments that take your breath away”—which, I gotta say, took my breath away. 

From a woman who never exercised, we inherited four huge fitness machines—two still banded in shipping cartons. And what to do with the worst pop CD collection ever? (How much Manilow can one own?) Last month, at Black Bear Diner, I sat too close to their gift shop with shelves full of souvenir mugs; ball caps; sweatshirts; key fobs; tee shirts; earrings and phone cases. I’ll exaggerate and say I started to shake and sweat—a kind of PTSD (or Post Traumatic Stuff Disorder) brought on by my many months of drowning in piles of useless crap. 

I’ve become afflicted with a near-pathological revulsion to stuff. Thank God this didn’t happen earlier in my life: For 35 years, my career was devoted to creating and selling stuff. Now, I have only a bleak vision of where all stuff ends—like gazing at a face and seeing only a skull. 

I don’t want any more stuff in my life. It’s over. My wife Kathy and I recently celebrated her birthday and our anniversary with zero gifts. It’s fine. We’re fine.

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