A topic that continues to be a theme in my life is “stuff,” or more accurately, the accumulation and purging (voluntary or otherwise) of household stuff. From musing about the process of efficiently disposing of a lifetime of stuff, to examining my changing attitude toward acquiring vs. purging,  I’ve thought about it – and written about it – a lot.

I suppose that “stuff” is a topic I revisit because I’ve always battled my own messiness. I love stuff, but I hate clutter. That’s why it’s so easy for me to make a trip to the Goodwill one day, in search of some particular treasure, and then the next day give away bags and boxes of other stuff I no longer want or need. (It’s the latter tendency that gives me comfort whenever I wonder if I will become one of those old ladies who hoards after the children move away.)

I had an interesting conversation the other day on Facebook, where I mentioned that I have a few items from dad’s estate for sale. A friend wondered if it was overly emotional, seeing all these things that had been in storage for awhile, knowing they had belonged to my dad.

I thought about that pretty carefully, and I realized that the strongest emotion I was feeling when confronted with the stuff wasn’t sadness about its connection to my dad – it was guilt. Guilt over not wanting to keep everything.

A part of me truly thinks that someone should want to be the keeper of all this stuff, so that perhaps it could be handed down, but I just do not want the responsibility when they are things I don’t absolutely love.  After the floods, we moved from a small, cluttered house into a larger place that feels open and clean and light precisely because we’ve been able to keep the clutter under control. Call me selfish, but I don’t want to fill the place with stuff I don’t like and whose only purpose is to remind me of an individual I’m never going to forget anyway.

The stuff I have for sale has all been in a storage unit since the summer of 2008. I’ve paid upwards of $80 a month since then to keep it, and I’ll admit that part of my motivation to sell it now is to get out from under that monthly payment.

Still, it’s a task I’ve managed to put off for two years. With my folks now both gone, storing all this stuff has really been my last official duty as someone’s daughter. And that’s a role I find difficult to relinquish.

Flickr photo by jekemp.