It's So Hard to Get Rid of Things (Or... Letting Go)

Every time I return to my home in Urbana, I face a problem. There is so much stuff accumulated, and I know I have to do something about it.

When I took a position at Barnard College, I left everything in the house, just took a few pieces of furniture and some books I needed to New York, making it easy to move back and forth between two places. But I have been obsessed with what to do with everything in the house ever since my husband died more than 6 and a half years ago.

I’m a keeper—not a hoarder, but a keeper of things. In my profession I have become a historian (though never formally trained) fascinated by understanding and making sense of the past, of literature, in its historical, cultural, intellectual contexts. I have also been trying to understand my own past, the strange family I grew up in, with a messianic father, expecting the end times. But this work feels different, closer to the bone.

Tony and I were together more than 45 years, moving our stuff from place to place, always accumulating more things as we went - more furniture, desks, large bookcases stocked with many hundreds of books and lots of papers. Then, in the late 90s, there were all the treasures I rescued from my family home in Rowayton, Connecticut, including dark plum-colored flared crystal glasses from the late 40s of various sizes, two vintage sets of china, which we didn’t need since Tony and I already had our own. There was a set of silverware from World War II days witb a printed note attached that said the silver blades of the knives needed to be replaced with metal once the war was over.

Almost every time I return here to Urbana, I get to work. I sort and donate boxes and boxes of books, which should be disposed of. But I hardly made a dent. I took a set of glasses and of the vintage china to Habitat for Humanity. Each thing requires a decision, and that’s emotionally draining. Hauling the heavy boxes is physically challenging, but cathartic.

I’ve already sorted and gotten rid of needless papers, both Tony’s and mine. Same with old clothes, ones that carry memories of an earlier, younger time. It was hard to let go of two beautiful dresses - one from when I was young, beautiful, and thin. Another I bought in London the first time I went to the UK from a cool store in the Chelsea area that no longer exists. They don’t make clothes like these anymore. Everything then was made to last, whether it was clothing, dishes, furniture, etc., to be passed down. But now we live in a throw-away culture that is the counterpart of an accumulating one, where we always need the newest thing. A new car with technology I won’t be able to adjust to. Technology that’s created to be, and to create things, that are quickly outmoded or unusable. Things out of our control, like my iPhone that updates on its own, messing up all my photos (and deleting some), or my Apple Car Play that sometimes refuses to work.

It’s not just our minds, but things we have to hold memories, carrying the imprint of a person. I’ve kept the LL Bean blue winter parka Tony wore for years. When I see it, I see him in it, bundling up to walk our beloved dog on a cold winter night. The body, in a material sense too, leaves something behind.

I’m a keeper, not a hoarder, and yet… Growing up in a house filled with old things, I lived with a father who kept saying that we were living in the end-times. He was what we now would call a “prepper” or “doomsdayer.” We had a generator before anyone around us did. He bought and stored cartons of canned food in our celler. A freezer in the garage held even more food.

One of my brothers has an attachment to things, which is different than mine and serves a different purpose. In addition to keeping pictures and objects from our house when we were little, he buys and collects beautiful things. He has worked to be surrounded by more and more things, so many that he can hardly move (indeed, he has fallen as a result). These things comfort him, make him feel secure, I think, but they also take him to another world of beauty, an alternative to escape. Now that he’s moved into senior living, he cannot take it with him. He is an extreme case, with his addiction to things of beauty, and hanging onto the past, but I understand the pain.

Withdrawal. It is the problem we all do or will face eventually.