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Realignment and the Great Giveaway
About two years ago, I got real about decluttering and how great it felt to have a clean, tidy, spacious home. I wrote about it here. It worked, and I was happy.
But only months later, my mother-in-law’s dementia had worsened to such an extent that we had to move her in with us. We sold her home, and everything in ours was upside down again. That’s just life being life. We kept our home as clean and happy as we could, but it has regained all the weight it had lost from my original decluttering.
Then my beloved mother-in-law passed away.
This was followed by the hard work of going through her belongings — a little at a time, because even under the best of circumstances it’s such overwhelming work. And I’m not even her biological daughter. My wife had the lion’s share of sorting through the mountain of memorabilia, and dealing with all the bureaucracy and heartbreak that goes alone with surviving your mother, your last living parent.
This got me thinking.
I stood in my studio and tried to imagine how my own grown children would feel if I passed suddenly. (Not talking about emotions here, I’m talking about stuff. What will they think they need to do with my stuff? What will they want…
