We're Not Getting Any Younger: Clutter and Aging

there hi everybody Welcome to the June 2014 Houston color coaching Meetup Group say hi everybody hi so you know I'm actually talking to people and not just the wall um we're going to talk about clutter and aging today and the topic that Ed wrote that I think is very clever is we're not getting any younger clutter and aging and this is a topic that I have to preface with um usually we're talking about your own clutter and your own stuff and now we're going to talk about other people in your life stuff and we're going to talk about death and dying so I just need to preface it with um please don't take offense if I talk in very objective and uh practical terms about someone dying um it's just part of the process and I if you're having trouble with it raise your hand and yell at me I don't I don't want to I don't want to upset anybody or trigger anybody's issues but I do want to talk about in Practical terms about what it means to manage the stuff as people pass away so that's what we're going to talk about today um part of it so everybody knows what happens as you get older right you start to slow down you don't have as much energy you start to lose physical abilities right you can't uh lift as much you don't your grip isn't as strong um you start to lose some mental acuity maybe you're uh losing your ability to focus a little bit maybe it's getting harder to stay on task for a long periods of time these are the kinds of things that start to slip as you get older and those are exactly the kinds of things that you need in order to work with clutter so it makes the project get harder and harder for you to deal with and there's really sort of two uh sides to this coin you as you're aging and the people that are in front of you that are aging and then leaving you with the collection to play with so we'll address both sides of that conversation today and you can ask questions about both sides of that conversation today but this is basically the landscape of clutter as you get older I've heard a whole lot of stories about the kids who are left behind with the stuff when the parents pass away the uncle whoever is gone and they have to go and dig out the house and it's usually the worst possible time to be making any kind of decisions at all cuz you're in grief and you can't focus and you can't think and you're depressed and you can't move and all of your ability to be all organized and in action sort of goes by the wayside as you process someone's death and so it's a really hard time to have to deal with it um while I Was preparing for this I actually through Facebook had a little short 10-minute film go by a filmmaker in Brooklyn um created a little short film about dealing with empty in her mother's apartment after her mother passed away and she put in pieces of um the mother in advance and asking her mother things like how am I supposed to live without my mother and the mother's saying things like well you just learn to do that and then she also put in the pieces of the her and her siblings in the apartment going through the stuff with the boxes with the labels one of them said giveway and she had scratched it out and put her name on and she talked about things like she was they only had three weeks to empty the apartment is Brooklyn right real estates important I'm sure it was a rental and so they had to get out so one brother came from out of state and he took a con shell that's all you took one thing and then she was really very attached to all the contents in the apartment and she was having a really hard time and she lists things like I couldn't throw out my mother's partial her teeth partial or the glasses or the toothbrush like those things were too attached to her and is he going to get you a chair too attached to her and had too much of her energy still in them for her and she couldn't let them go very personal they were very personal and they felt really important three weeks out it was too hard to throw that kind of stuff away so that went back to her apartment so they showed sort of the dismantling of the apartment and they talked in interspersed about the kinds of things that she was keeping and the kinds of things that um were hanging her up and how she couldn't believe that her brother only took the shell and that was all he wanted and then the the end of the film of the 10 minutes is the moving truck showing up at her apartment and here comes 25 boxes into her little apartment in clearly in the New York area right and and then these three pieces of furniture that she wanted to keep and they gave away a lot you can tell that they gave away a whole lot a lot but she kept the stuff that she couldn't make the decisions about and basically crowded herself out of her apartment by the time the moving truck had left and this is what happens with people you can't make the decisions so you either under stress you keep it all or you throw it all and neither one of those works really well if you keep it all you're crowded out of your house if you throw it all then really important memories assets valuables keepsakes go out the window because you're too stressed out to deal with it and everybody has their own version of one or the other like you either either your Panic means you keep or your Panic means you throw get it out of my face I can't deal with it so I have clients that do both of those things and neither one of them is really a good solution and but but you understand it's the most the death of the spouse is the number one stressful thing but I think death of the parent comes in pretty close right it's a really really stressful thing so one of the things that the daughter expressed um regret about as she was talking in this film was her mother kept saying to her her mother had a Cancer and so there was some period of time while she was treated and and then slowly died and oh the mom kept saying to her please come and go through the stuff with me a she was not physically able so she was having a hard time and B she wanted to explain stuff to the doct she wanted to say here's the people in this photo and that's why this chachki is important and here's where I got this little thing from our vacation or whatever and she wanted to tell those stories and the daughter couldn't face the fact she says in the film that she couldn't face the fact that if they were going through the stuff that meant that Mom was dying and she wasn't ready to deal with that so she kept putting it off and she put it off until her mom passed away so she didn't get the stories and she regretted that she didn't go in help her mom grow through the stuff she wished that she could have gotten around that barrier for herself and gone and spend the time and listened to the tales and known what was important and she picked up somewhere in the film a photograph and she said well I think that this is Uncle John or something but I'm not sure about these other you know it's like she didn't know and now it was gone she didn't know who the people were so she was really regretting that as a sweet thing that she could could have shared with her mom that she didn't get to do Gail yes ma'am can you provide the link to that I went to go find it and I couldn't find it I'm I will keep looking I saw it I read it I went by I came back a few days later and percolated the conversation um what I was going to write today and then I went looking looking looking I couldn't find it so I'll keep trying yeah it was a very wonderful independent you know filmmaker great 10 minutes it was wonderful and I'll do my best of to find it so let's talk about the various reasons why it's important to deal with your clutter now let's be you know the mom in this disjuncture and deal with a clutter while it's a chore and not an impossible task managing the Clutter requires physical capacity you have to be able to walk you have to be able to lift boxes you have to be able to bend you have to climb on ladders and and you know I know this very well as I'm wearing my knee brace and I'm trying to get on ladders to put things away for people you know going up a step stool to get up to the top shelf and it's really not good it doesn't feel good so you have to have the physical capacity to manage clutter and if you are waiting until you've broken your ankle or you've fallen down or you're having hip surgery or you have an illness and you no longer have the physical capacity it's too late so you need to recognize that it's going to require your physical capacity to do it which means that you have to do it earlier rather than later the the clock is ticking and your physical capacity is sliding by right so the longer you wait the harder the chore is going to get for you once it becomes too hard for you to manage then you have to surrender control to someone else right then you have to call and help so if you pay your help like me then I will be gentle with you and talk to you about your stuff and help you sort and you might end up keeping more than if your daughter comes in or some other family member who sorting your stuff is a a worse chore than sorting their own stuff right and so when you call in that related or friendly help to come and help you it's going to be um a much more painful process for both of you right um I got a call recently from um someone I had met the daughter was in California the mother's moving and she's a hoarder basically and she was hoping that an organizer could come in two weeks before and convince the mom to leave a whole bunch of stuff behind she wanted me to be the Clutter police and we went and worked with the mom for a couple of days and the mom was just so mad and they were fighting so badly that she was just like get out of the house I can't deal with this so we were not able to help at all and we walked away from a situation that I know the mom and the daughter were throwing things at each other they were fighting it was very volle and desperate so I know that it was a horrible move and it must have been miserable for them and while most of us have slightly better relationships with our relatives in that I know that there are some people when families you push each other's buttons right you make each other crazy and you call the daughter or you call the son and say you need to come help me and they're like Mom don't want to come help you don't want to do your stuff or fine they come because they feel guilty and then you guys get in a bunch of arguments because they want to they don't care about your stuff they want it gone they want the chore over as as fast as possible so it leaves you in a position of if once you run out of physical capacity you're going to have to have help and you're going to have to surrender some control and if you try to maintain a lot of control you'll probably be you know in some arguments it'll probably uh not go as smooth as you would hope or wish right so I'm just warning you this is a where we counsel about bringing in people that you feel comfortable working with instead of the obvious bringing my relative who then I'm going to fight with about this stuff for some reason um dealing with parents siblings clutter really gets under people's skin and causes a lot of mom why are you keeping that you don't need that it's mine and you don't get to tell me what to do so you hear you have that conversation a lot everybody has it and I sort of step in the middle and go okay you need to go to the other room we're just going to talk over here amongst ourselves because that conversation is stress born and it's from you know nobody wants to be doing this chore and everybody's mad that they're having to do it and maybe there's time pressure and maybe there's whatever ever else is going on and it brings out really bad behavior in everybody and so if you want dealing with your clutter to be calm and peaceful and less stressful and you need to be doing it while you have the capacity and the energy to be doing it yourself and having people help you not doing it for you see the distinction a sudden medical event May take away your ability to function right maybe you have a stroke maybe you um get super sick and you're in the hospital for 3 months I hear stories a lot where somebody gets sick and they go in the hospital and they come home and the house has been cleared out like the kids see it as an opportunity to clean mom's house and they come and plow through right you assume that that isn't going to happen you assume that your relatives aren't going to do that but if they feel like you're living in unsafe environment if they feel like there's more here than you need or can manage if they're worried about your Walker or the hospital bed or whatever they may come in and plow through some of your stuff without your permission or knowledge and they may do it with your permission or they may do it and tell you they're going to do it but you're not going to be there and you may come home to God knows what they took away when you were not available the other side of that is if you have a sudden medical event you may lose your capacity completely to sit stand walk lift yeah you may lose mental acuity you may not be able to focus anymore you may be confused a lot sometimes the people that I'm working with are people that have reached that point in their life where the idea of sorting and putting things away is too confusing to them so you get to that part in your life too where you know it's it's not all you don't have all the skill set you need to make it happen and you have to hire people to do it it's just one of the things that you you know might have to give up so think about the idea that you're going to downsize as you age right we start in one room in our parents house we go to college and stay in a dorm room we leave college and we go to an apartment that's probably one or two bedrooms right or we get married and get our first little house somewhere along the way we get the house right the big fancy most expensive house and then somewhere in your life you turn the corner and you start to downsize so you and you go back to ultimately that one bedroom apartment or that one room right so you may end up being in with your family maybe you move in with a relative come on in they're right there or back there maybe you're going to go St a relative you're going to move in with your your kids well they're going to give you a groom and that's going to be your room and then the rest of the house is going to be common area right so if you have a house full of stuff it's not going to fit in one room maybe you're going to go to Independent Living I help people do that all the time the big apartment in an independent living is a two-bedroom so maybe you'll end up with a two-bedroom apartment and a storage closet on the grounds like if it's like in a high-rise building they give you a little parking space inside the building for your stuff it's not super big let me just tell you so there's going to be some point in your life where you're going to have to downsize maybe that'll be triggered by medical Events maybe that will be triggered by you making the choice that you're tired of cooking your own meals and you want the cafeteria either way you're going to have to plan and dispose of 75% of your stuff 80% of your stuff if you go to one room it might be 95% of your stuff that's a big project right and it's going to be done in a hurry with relatives so unless you are able to start to thin the herd well in advance that'll be one of those projects where people that know and love you will come in and things will start flying out the door and it'll be hard for you to manage everything and to know exactly and so it's an environment where the potential for things going away that you don't want to go away is pretty high and not taking more than you can fit in the apartment is also very high so it's something that if you could start the project now then thin thin keep making it smaller and smaller collection by the time it's time to jump to a smaller apartment by the time you downsized you'll have less to you'll be down to the final decisions the stuff that's you can say okay these pieces of furniture will actually fit in the new apartment that I've picked and the rest of these pieces of furniture you know family members you guys need to come and take them away or whatever going to do distribute them um sell them whatever the final disposition is and they'll be less for everybody to pack and manage and then unpack on the other end right because depending on what kind of shape you're in uh you may or may not be able to pack or unpack I got called in for a lady who was um she's in her 80s and she moved out of a big house of Memorial into two-bedroom Independent Living place and um really the idea of standing up I mean she's in great shape but standing up for six hours and unpacking boxes was really taxing her that's just beyond her capacity so she unpacked some things and worked with other people and I unpacked the kitchen and it took me six hours and I'm 30 years younger than her so she it was really more of a project than she could handle and she was very happy to have it done at the end but it you know there's only so much you want to put your energy towards and you know 6 hours unpacking kitchen boxes when you're 85 not high on the list right so you want that what moves to the apartment to be as minimal as possible and you want to be able to make those decisions slowly over time right you don't want to jam it all up in a ball at once so Now's the Time to start in in the herd right so then the next question is I'm running out of steam I don't have as much energy my physical capacity is less can I still do the project yes you can it means that instead of working six hours a day or three hours a day maybe you can only work two hours a day or an hour a day right which means that you're going to have to have a much longer lead time to clear out the house if you can only put in an hour a day because that's your energy level that means you have to have a whole bunch of more days right to get it done so the idea that you can sort of run up to the last week before a move this is true when you're 30 you can't pack your house in a week and I've had people take off week yeah I'll pack the house in a week and then I get a call like three days in oh my God I it's not going to be done you got to come help me right we always underestimate how much time it's going to take and if you can only work a few hours a day then you need to like figure out that you're going to take two times as much as you think you're going to take yes ma'am de side know I just cleaned out my small compact car after not touching it for a couple years and yeah you yeah you got it stuff like about an hour is worth at work accumulating that little space yay that's good for you but you're right it's like a compact car it's a little space and it takes a long time if it's full right and all of your cabinets is the same thing it's like think of all the cabinets in their in the house is little compact cars full of stuff you jam them full and you J them and close the door on them and hope nobody tries to open it and make it explode right but when you go to unpack you have to open it and it all has to come out and there's way more in there than you can possibly remember or imagine was there right so it is a project that takes a long time to dismantle your life in your home and whether you do it or you let others do it or someone has to do it after you're gone it's going to be a huge amount of work and so how much you want to partic participate in that and how much you're willing to surrender to other people is up to you um the lady who was in her 80s she had control of it she did not want me making any decisions she didn't call me until all the packing was done she called me to unpack on the other end she knew where all the furniture was going to go she had been drawing floor plan she had planned it all out so she had a really tight grip on the project she was not letting go and not let anybody tell her what to do but in the end when we went over there it's like okay so all this stuff came for the kitchen so Gail you just got to get all that in there somewhere and so she left me to do that part if you want to have that much control she spent a year and a half in advance of this move going through everything so when I went over to the house before she moved out of it to meet her we went and opened all the closets they were all pristine there was hardly anything in any of the cabinets all the drawers were half 3/4 empty it was amazing they had thrown away 75% of her life already or taking it to Goodwill or sold it or giv it away she and her daughters had been working on it for a year and a half before she put the house on the market and it was a really you know she put the time in to get it down so that she paid less less for packing and they could do it in a day and we could unpack most of it in a couple of days and it and it went really well but for her to have full control required a year and a half of ruthlessly going through all of her stuff to make it disappear and that's what's required if you accept the premise that at some point you're going to leave your house and go to a smaller something then preparing for that in advance slowly over time is a much better plan than having it all jammed up in your face at the last minute right here's another reason to do this like the lady who said that she regretted that her she did not go and listen to her mother's Tales you know things about your family the photos I went through some stuff in uh the garage in my mother's house and she we Unearthed some artwork that she had done in college that I had never seen like oh this is cool mom where' this come from oh I did that in college what it was a big surprise if she hadn't been there and told me that I would not have known that when it came to time to clean out her garage I would have thought oh here's some interesting art we need to sell I wouldn't have known it was Mom's so we all have stories in our head and memories associated with objects right and here's Grandma's table and this came from the h the farm of your you know great grand whatever and here's the photos and here's all the people in the photos you have all that data in your head that you know that has not by osmosis gone to your children right they don't know that detail but later they're going to want to know it right so either you spend the time to tell the stories and to take some of those momentos and pass them on while you're living or she wrote um cards on all somebody else who was telling me this I went for an assessment appointment and the lady's uh mother-in-law had died and she had emptied the house of everything except the important collections furniture and clothes and things that she thought were valuable and she written notes on everything so when they went into the house everything had a card on it in it attached to it they explained what it was why it was important who it came from it had data on it I don't know how many years she spent doing that I mean a whole house full of little notes on Stu everything it must taken forever right um in my mind to telling the story is a little easier let somebody else take notes on that but that was her coping mechanism to pass her information to her kids because she was in Connecticut and they were in another state and it was easier for her to do that one of the things that she in the film talked about was the idea that she didn't want to have that conversation because she didn't want to face that her mom was dying and I think we all as children suffer from that we don't want to talk to you about your inevitable demise right that's too distressing and upsetting so we don't want to have those conversations and while the estate plan and the lawyer and the accountant will tell you to have those conversations because of Financial and legal reasons I'm going to tell you that because of the keepsakes and the family history and the family lore that you want to retain and if you don't have that conversation before the stroke before the cancer before the chemo treatments before something goes wrong you will not have that opportunity and having that conversation when nobody's sick and everybody's healthy and there's not some imminent problem happening will make it a much easier and more pleasant conversation so I think it's worth it to consider that going through the Clutter now will unearth your Treasures which you then can explain and pass while everything's okay and while you can get the pleasure of handing it off and knowing that it went to Kathy and I'm happy about that you know you can get that benefit of knowing where it went and knowing who's the keeper of it now and who's heard the story and and it's not stressful for you to do while everybody is okay does that make sense I think leaving it to your family to do which is generally our default position we sort of live our lives and don't worry about it the triggering event happens and we get downsized or we pass away or we go into the hospital or whatever happens and we leave a really big burden for our kids to deal with and I think we don't want to face the chore but neither do they they have their own clutter to deal with and the idea of then going to your house and dealing with yours is a really big burden and it's a burden that is particularly heavy when you are grieving so the combination of those two I think is really um sad and hard and it's something to consider if you do not feel motivated for yourself to deal with your stuff being motivated for your family members it would be helpful maybe it's something that you can do for your kids or your grandkids if you can't make yourself do it for yourself you see what I'm saying I know that they will come and into your house and people do it all day long and stuff gets thrown away and things go Ary and houses get packed up and wholesale and taken home people sometimes go and they pack up everything in the house and it all goes to Mo to their own home and it's like they moved a second person in overnight and then their house is drowning right so you know that if it's a burden for you it's going to be a supreme burden for them so if you're sitting in a house that feels cluttered to you now imagine someone having to come and pack it all up and take it to their home and add it into their stuff and I think that's a really big thing to ask of someone that you love and who is sad and grieving about your loss so use it as a motivation when you don't feel like oh I don't want to spend two hours doing this when you don't feel feel enthusiastic be a mom or a dad and gge your loins and go do it for your kids and if you can do it now and slowly in small pieces over time you can get to the end and it'll be okay you can get to the end and it won't have been terrible and it won't have been a complete destruction of your life it will if you can get rid of it slowly over time it's much less painful than having to rip the Band-Aid off and get rid of all of it at once right when you know somebody calls and says mom you you can't go home to your house you need to have full-time care and we're going to move you in over here and we got to you know we can come this weekend to move you and then there's going to be a big fire drill to get you out so I just want you to consider you're giving yourself a gift and that you are retaining control over what comes and goes and you're retaining control over the speed at which you do it and you're not not over taxing your own energy level to do it and you can make that schedule and do that work in a way that works for you and that still allows you to make all the decisions but if you wait you're going to surrender all that stuff and I don't want you have to do that so sorry to be talking about dying but it is part of being you know the middle-aged troll you guys can't see that my microphone on the camera has a little hair hat on that looks like a troll so and we named the middle-aged troll because it's black and white so it's important for us to know as middle-aged people and I'm just going to generally say in the room we're mostly middleaged in here that um we're going to have to deal with this we're going to have to deal with it for our parents and people are going to have to come behind and deal it with it for us and so give yourself the gift and it'll be a good thing okay who has questions who's in this situation yes ma'am I have been through the situation my mother moved in with me like you said oh so Mom moved in with you okay with me 12 years die I have all the stuff then the sisters come and get their big boxes and take them to their house and I don't have any kids so I'm kind of like what do I do with this stuff you know because I don't want to leave this house full of yeah right so you're the last one standing you have many kids so then what do you do right yeah you make some decisions so you have siblings so were you to predecease your siblings of course your siblings are going to want some of your stuff but just like the brother like the son that came and took one con shell no one's going to want your whole house right that's the bottom line nobody's taking all your stuff home right so there's going to be 10% 5% 15% of the things in your house that are really important to you and really valuable to you and they're important because of your life experience and your memory right no one else in the universe has your memories or life experience so to them all that stuff is going to look like stuff you tell them the story offer them the stuff and the your siblings may take some of it away but that's going to peel off 10 or 15% of your belongings if you make the effort to say this is why this is important to me this is valuable this was Mother's bracelet this was Grandma's table you know don't you guys want this stuff and they may say yes and they may say no it may be that the value stops with you and no one that you know wants it and then it has to go on to the next person and I try to think of it like this you know think of it like you're just releasing it back into the universe right like somebody out there is going to receive it and love it and just because you don't know who that person is doesn't mean somebody isn't going to find it in a resale shop somewhere and lose their minds because it's so cool right you don't know where it's going to go so part of it is just accepting that if I get don't get to see that it goes to someone that I know and love who knows the story and values the memory I'm just going to have to trust that I can release it and you know most of it will be picked up somewhere else and then there's just you know you know that's 15 or 20% of the house and then the other 80% disposable trash resale Goodwill it's not super valuable it's just the stuff that we surround ourselves with it's the old silverware that doesn't matter thank you it's the it's the leftover plastic cups that nobody is you know it's like you haven't you shoved them to the back of the thing and you're you're not looking at them anymore so there's a huge amount of not everything in your house is sentimental not everything is it keep safe Ed is saying that you can call hccm CF h.com I mean send an email to that address and he can see it if you want to ask a question online but if you're watching the tape too bad we had four people watching yay hi four people watching nice to see you yes ma'am if you have some out of town uh relatives who want the stuff who is responsible for getting it to them is it your on your D or should they pay to I think that's a negotiated thing if you have the money and you want it to go there that badly you can pay for it if they want it that badly and you don't have the money they need to pay for it and get it gone and here's one thing too I hear this a lot mom don't give that away that's mine yeah no it's my house brother man sorry you are not a storage unit right your house is not the storage unit so there's a certain amount of my son son moved out and he lives in an apartment that's this big in New York City and he can't take these 47 things okay but if he's living in New York he's never going to be in a big house so this stuff that you're saving for him you need to let it go let him pick some and let it go there's always going to be stuff that your kids say Mom you need to keep this what they're really saying is I know it's clutter and it has sentimental value but I don't really have time to deal with this so just store it no you need to force the issue I'm not a storage unit I don't want to keep it e either you want it or you don't want it when they come for Christmas they come to visit pull the box out say go through the box what you don't want get rid of it and you know it's always a surprise because they forget what's in the box because they stored it when they were teenagers right and then they open and they're like what is all this it was stuff that was important to them when they were 17 then now that they're 40 have kids is of no importance at all right right but they forgot about it so those kinds of things are um you know kids hijacking their moms and dads to be the free storage unit so uh-uh shut that down and you know you can ask nicely but you can also say okay like so it's Christmas and you're here so go through the box and what you don't want I'm going to take to Goodwill and then if you don't get around to it I'm going to take it to Goodwill basically and you know as a mom you can open it and go yeah he might want that if you if you think it's absolutely necessary but um I had you know those big flip top containers you get at Home Depot and massive ones 14 of them for photo albums and pictures my whole life right right so I sent an email to everybody in the family and said these are going to the shredder I I've Shu these around for 4 years and I'm not doing it anymore and so if you want them you have to come and get them nobody did I schle them to my daughters I moved in with my daughter last week um so my living space went from 2500 ft to 1600 ft on that house flooded 9 and 600 ft okay so um so 2500 square feet ultimately to 600 square feet so I paid a an organizer she spent last Saturday we were 14 to 16 hour days oh my gosh Saturday and um she was heartless thank God because I I can't ever do this again ever right so my question is is I have these things that belong to members of the family like uh when my husband worked in Africa and China albums full of pictures is there like a historical society that wants them um actually what's the name of the place downtown um Clayton the Clayton Library Clayton yes we used to meet there okay so there is a library in Houston called The Clayton genealogical Library that may want historical pictures um you can also if you think that they're particularly um like related to China or related to if there's specific topics no I am not scanning a thing everybody I yeah whatever a project scan no no no no I hear you so she has a whole bunch of photographs some of which you've gotten rid of yeah thousands have already gone by you there's a small set now that you think might be significant to someone so I would go to somewhere on the planet right you might go if you think it's like China related yes he was he was you might go to a university an embassy you know something like that if you think that there's a potential that there's something important in there is that these are pictures of child labors they put children to work at a very small age in right right right so there's a specific topic so if you think it's a specific topic Google Google people that specialize in that area and you can ship them the packet you have the Houston Metropolitan Research Center which is the Julia oison building Houston Public Library yeah and they me there's so many universities in the area they also have you know specific um subjects they want yeah yeah yeah and they will scan if they want exactly I'm sorry to say that this is the you know this is the bane of everyone's existence the 37 photo albums from all the vacations that your parents took before digital anything right and before we had the internet so we everybody took a picture they went to Paris and took a picture of the Eiffel Tower yeah your dad's picture of the Eiffel Tower is not the best picture of the Eiffel Tower on the planet right so it's not it doesn't have historical significance there's no people in it you know it doesn't really matter so there is a whole sort of slew of me it's sort of the Dead media of our age right and we're all inheriting the dead media so plucking out the people that you don't know plucking out the scenery and Landscapes that you don't care about and you could shrink the population down and and my roommate actually did that she inherited her parents were uh first generation Greek and they inherited a bunch she inherited pictures from from both of their families of course big pile and she went through those photos over and over again I don't know that person I don't know that place I don't know that house I don't know that dog she got rid of everything that she didn't recognize or know and called it down to the the people pictures with people in them that she knew who they were and that made a really small population and also she found really precious pictures of her mom and dad and you know there was grandparents and people that she remembered that she'd never seen and so she got some cool pictures out of it but she has a little crate size box that has photos in it down from like you said 14 albums because think about it we all collect digital images on the photo on the camera now we can thousands of pictures on our camera well so the media of the day was 15 albums 15 tubs of albums because we all everybody took millions of pictures and they saved them and scrapbooked them like crazy and filled up a entire bookshelf with all their you know photos right so we're all going to be dealing with those photos and just like the house there's going to be 10% of the photos that are cool and there's going to be 90% of the photos that are trash and Melanie pay for an organizer to come and go through all the photos and be ruthless and heartless which I love that's hilarious great description um but it was necessary right you couldn't do it she could do it that was the solution that's excellent that's she's been the boss of me for six days she's been the boss of me for six days that's right yes ma'am is that something well um so I would do it hourly um but there's actually a person out there called the photo Nanny she's an organizer that specializes in um photo organizing and she will take a collection of photos and pull the gems out and make a scrapbook out of it cost a lot of money she's not cheap but if you want a Lovely permanent book that is you know fancy and special of all of your really great photos you can make that happen if you want to throw the money around totally possible I don't sit and make scrapbooks that's not my thing not happening you make jewelry tell I make jewelry I'm not making scrap yeah yeah she has a whole office she's got six staff they have have a whole you know rooms of tubs with other they take all your photos and take them to their office and they scan them all and mess with them all and they publish books on the back end it's it's a whole system that they do and it's quite astonishing yes ma'am for say you had a ton of photo albums if you just maybe scan if I don't know how easy it would be to like scan pages and then then get rid of it well problem is scanning pages is that those album Pages aren't going to go through the scanner sit on the scanner yeah that's I'm saying but think about the labor you're so she's asking about do you want to scan the photo albums you could or get a kid to do it yeah so how would you Wrangle a kid into sitting there with a scanner all day long that's what I want to know Moola so I'm guessing they get about you know 10% yeah see I'm guessing that they they'll get 10% through the project and then they'll bail because it will be fun right there are Services that'll do it for you you can yeah I mean you can send the photos away he's right you how important it is yeah and you know it's and it's all about the money you want to spend right so either you're going to spend money for someone else to do all that labor or you're going to do all that labor but transferring photos either scanning photos or some other way of capturing digitizing those photos is a really a labor intensive project so you have to decide where it is on your list of things to do and in terms of decluttering the house I think it just like any other decluttering project there's a short and fast version right you take them all out of the albums you go through and select this is a photo I want this is a photo I don't want and you send the herd and put them in a box and put them away like that's the short wrangling version of then you're going to pass on a box of photos you know one of those photo boxes that can hold you know a thousand photos or eight however many gazillion photos in a box right and then you'll pass that on to your relative and then they'll throw the Box away but you know it's if you have have some sense of there's photos in here that I want to keep I want to be able to see again and I don't want them to all be in albums and take up all that space you can thin the herd and leave yourself with an unorganized box you know they make photo Keepers that are plastic you can sort them by category this is my mom these are pictures of my mom these are pictures of my dad you know you can make big categories and and be done so yeah and photos is one of those things you can you can do as little or as much as you would like to do it thank you um it's really up to you how much labor you want to put into it yes do you have a list of places that you canate to that may pick up suggestions pick up what kind of stuff are you just talk you're not talking about photos anymore photos Furniture things that have value that you really do want toate I've been donating to Salvation Army but there are other places that [Music] organ yes so she's asking about sources of places to donate in Houston um it will pick up that'll pick up they don't all pick up there are some that do you can Google and and get a list uh Salvation Army like you said does purple heart does Veterans does Veterans what's it called Veterans Paralyzed Veterans thank you Paralyzed Veterans and there's another one too there's a couple veterans nonprofits um there's all sorts of ways to divest of that stuff if you have something but nobody wants all of it right everybody is a specific thing like there's Houston Furniture Bank downtown they pick up but they want Furniture that's in good shape because they're either going to give it to people that need it or they're going to try to sell it to make money for their organization so they don't want your dirty old couch they don't want the couch that grandma died in right they want the stuff that's nice and in wonderful shape so if you have things that are in good shape Houston fure bank will solve your problem but and the thing is that in a household of items no one can solve 100% of your problem you're going to have to parse it out and the trick is to parse it out in as big of pieces of pie as possible like you said Salvation Army will take a whole slew of things and not others you don't want to pick really narrow um Solutions so that you have to make 20 more things to do yes that's Houston Furniture Bank it is them that's cool yeah they she's saying that she found a place that recycles mattresses in Box Springs Houston vure Bank um takes them and destroys them and they they like shred them all and they use the they build something with the Box rings and they shred all the contents and sell it off to be something remade and something else it's amazing you have to take them there no I think they pick them up they do yeah it's quite amazing they have a whole yeah there is a fe but you know what what else you going to do with it right so yes you guys are raising your hands politely thank you they um they won't take it if you have a cat or a dog they won't take the furniture if you have a cat or a dog okay thank you things like that okay heat and furniture back you me okay yeah um there's another place out there called free cycle you advertise things that most people wouldn't think that you could like when my mom passed away we had unopened packages of dep pens yeah and then yeah okay so she's talking about um you can give things away by going on to freecycle.org um there's specific free cycle sites for um cities and Houston has one as well and I don't remember the name of it I'm sorry fre cycle.org get you we'll get you there and basically there's a there you have to join there's a pattern for for how you list the item and how you say that somebody has agreed to pick it up and then you report it's picked up so there's a process that you go through the a formula and the zip code listing all that kind of stuff it's not hard but you can put anything out there and offer it to be picked up and if somebody wants it they contact you and say I want the leftover depends right and um I want the medical equipment I want your old craft supplies so you can put anything on there and offer it now that's also something that's a labor intensive it requires that you go make a listing for everything that you want to give away and then you have to take inquiries from people about by email about who and make arrangements to meet them somewhere because you don't want just anybody showing up at your house so it is something that you have to do either long-term over time or spend a whole bunch of time at once making all the listings and making all the appointments so there's um it's a good way to get rid of stuff that you have large quantities of and you don't have a lot of options a place is drop it off okay who else is over there yes I just on the fre cycle it's like a ho vacuum you barely put it on and people come get everything they do I put it on my porch or my driveway and it's just it's recycling at its finest because you know you can say I'll leave it on the porch and it will you will go to work and come home and it will have disappeared yeah I have a question about the Freecycle in the past I heard you have to pay to be recy no that is not correct okay it's a it's a complete non-monetary exchange board so there's it's just a it's just a format and a formula to contact people I have this to offer does anybody want it yes I do I will meet you here to take it away that's all it's about somebody over here is raising their hand no okay um gage.com does that too and and people that want to buy what you have um pay you through PayPal and you just oh so she's talking about their name on it right garagesale.com no vage with v v varage v a r age.com so there you go virtual garage I'm guessing virtual garage sale is what that is short for and U you know they pay you through PayPal and you leave it on the curb and they pick it up but all of those are solutions that barage sale.com oh barage sale.com thank you all of those Solutions are one item at a time one listing at a time so it's not what you want to do to empty your house you will spend all your time at the computer it's like scanning all the photos right it's not a bulk solution but it is a good solution for things that you can't otherwise get rid of or things you have large quantities of or that are odd or unusual or if like I said if you have time if you're doing it over a twoe period you can be listing stuff every week and eventually you'll get through it all but there there is some labor involved in it and so you just have to don't think of that as the empty the house solution because it'll take you a long time yes ma'am you can also look on fre cycle because people will put out there when they want something and that's how I got rid of a whole bunch of mason jars that I didn't realize I didn't need awesome awesome yeah so people do go on there and say I want one of these things on free cycle and if you have it you can then dispose of it you can hook up with somebody these are all great solutions for oneon-one one object between you and another person but that's real fine sorting that's not big bulk movement yes Ann this is just as this is super Quicky we were just talking about we've had stuff when we have stuff to get rid of and we just put it on the curb before heavy trash day and it's gone I had a vacuum cleaner where the wheel had broken I set the vacuum cleaner out you know an hour later it was gone put out the day one or two days before the heavy trash pickup there are trucks circling the neighborhood well and truthfully I think that everybody in my neighborhood knows that I put stuff by the curb because I get stuff from clients that can't go to Goodwill I know Goodwill will throw them away and I put them at the end of my driveway and I walk off the driveway and it's gone wow because I think people have figured out that I'm going to keep doing it forever and they keep coming by the house and so it's like once you start the you know pattern you will become a way way station as people drive they drive down like I see people driveing down the the street and they're slowing down looking to see what's on the curve you know so I'm happy for them to take it away and it goes to somebody that I don't know what they want it for but if it's going with someone instead of Goodwill's trash bin then that's awesome you know people are really proud of their stuff and sometimes they say yeah you can give that to Goodwill and I'm thinking yeah Goodwill ain't going to take that Goodwill is going to throw that out but I take it with and I put it at the end of the curb and off it goes to someone else that wants to hold it for a while so Urban recycling it is finest there's some neighborhoods that you can't do that kind of stuff with you you know the you know the neighbors are hostile and we'll give you a hard time but mostly you know you can go and put some at the end of the curb and it won't hang around for a long time the neighbors won't know it won't be there three days later and truly if it's there you know I let it sit overnight and if it's still there the next morning I pull it out but I've only had to pull it back off the curb like twice in 3 years so it hardly ever doesn't disappear immediately so it's a way to start if you're running out of steam it's a way to start get get rid of stuff you can't carry it you can't haul it off you don't know where it's supposed to go put it at the end of the curb and let it go yes your feeling of I can't handle the garage sell thing I don't like the garage cell thing either I don't know about if I'm living in a house having a estate sale what do you do do you put your stuff you want and go stay with someone else and have them estate sale your house so if it's a if it's specific if you hire an estate sale company they say to you that you you have to remove everything that you want okay so when you do the state sale for your parents for instance they're going to say the family has to come and take everything that they want because everything Left Behind is for sale they're not going to manage oh this stuff is not for sale over here yes ma'am I know if you don't want to mess with a hassle or garage sale yourself a couple of places they're having garage sale in the Spong users for donations okay oh there you go yeah if you don't want to time's up okay if you don't want to do a garage sale yourself there's always community garage sales that are looking for donations to raise money for their cause there's also um Grand Slam garage sales in Houston and around the country now I think too you can hire some you know young boys to come and manage the sale and split the money with them and basically they come take it out of the house they stand on the driveway they wave the signs you stay in your house and drink coffee and at the end they bring you a check and they take the rest away it's awesome now you're not getting you know you're getting 60% or 50% of the money they did a whole lot of work and they earned it but you know then you don't have to do nothing and you know garage sales are fun when you're 20 but they're not so fun when you're 50 I'm just saying you have their phone yes ma'am no it's website some toss a question grou for recommended place oh okay hold on let me he's telling me I got to stop this now okay thanks you guys come back next month see you soon and we'll ask the question

Channel: The Clutter Fairy

Views: 100,008

Keywords: clutter, organizing, elderly parents, aging, mementos, family history, physical limitations, meetup, Gayle Goddard, The Clutter Fairy, Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup

Id: 7Kypyb2Jcuc

Length: 56min 14sec (3374 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 28 2014