The Things Spring Cleaning Never Touches—

The Stuff Of Our Hearts

By Nancy K. Crevier

“Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions.”           —Peace Pilgrim

What is it that possesses us to hang onto those possessions that no longer play a part in our daily lives? What do we glean from hording those things that once brought us pleasure or pride for reasons that are now unclear?

Americans are a mobile group. We move from house to house, town to town, state to state, country to country, and when we do, we pack our belongings and take them with us. When we get to our new surroundings, we get more stuff, and we get rid of our old stuff. But not all of it.

Attics and basements from coast to coast are bursting with “stuff” stuffed into boxes and bins, dusty and travel weary, a bit banged up, yet still tightly sealed. Words hastily scrawled in magic marker on an outer flap, or perhaps just the heft of the box, the shape of the bag, or the size of the bin may clue us in to the contents; and despite our knowing that the contents have not been examined in years, nor will they be in the near future, these particular possessions are never left behind, are never tossed into the heap for the dump. They are our precious “things.”

“I have a box of old newspaper clippings from when I was a kid,” confessed Evelyn Kirner. “They are things that pertain to high school events from when I grew up in Meriden.” Her box of “stuff” has been on the move with her for at least 23 years. “I have definitely looked through the box sometime in the last ten years and I wondered, ‘Why am I keeping this ridiculous stuff?’ But I keep it. I don’t know, maybe I think that someday I’ll open it up and it will jog my memory to a different time.”

Mary Anderson is sentimentally attached to her boxes that have moved from house to house and state to state with her. “One of them is a box of all of my stuffed animals from when I was a child. I’m even starting to keep my kids’ stuffed animals now. I can’t throw them away; it would be like throwing away a friend.”

The other box that will always find its corner in the moving van, said Ms Anderson, contains the letters that she and her husband wrote to each other when they were dating. “That will move everywhere with us,” she declared.

A Little Trove Of History

Lincoln and Jean Sanders’ box of untossable “stuff” came with the 1747 Benjamin Curtis home that they bought on Glen Road in Sandy Hook. “The box was left in the attic and we were told by the previous owners that it was there when they moved in and that it had been there when the owners previous to them had moved in. We really don’t know how long the box has been there,” Mr Sanders said. What the box contains is of great interest to Mr Sanders, who is president of the local historical society. Since the box’s inception, apparently, it has been the repository for artifacts found on the property. “There are 18th and 19th Century fragments of pottery and such that have been found on the property over the years, or along the stone walls,” Mr Sanders said. He and his wife have added shards of delftware pottery and a few clay pipe pieces that they have come across in recent years. In addition, said Mr Sanders, a deed to the property signed with the seal of the reign of King George, prior to the Revolution, lies within the box.

There are no big plans for the box and its contents, said Mr Sanders. Hardly having outlived its usefulness, he imagines that he and any subsequent owner will continue to add to it tidbits of history that erupt to the surface of the property in the future. It most certainly is not bound for the local landfill, at any rate.

“Baby announcements and wedding invitations from anyone I’ve ever known,” said Katie Kent, of what is in one particular box that has trailed along wherever she has lived. “I keep all of the Christmas card pictures, too. It’s such a personal memento.” While she is uncertain as to whether or not she even remembers who some of the people are anymore, she thinks that the time and place will one day come when she is happy she kept them. “I think it’s that six degrees of separation thing: that I figure I will someday connect it all together. I just can’t throw them away.”

Occasionally, practicality plays a big part in why certain boxes of “stuff” might move from one spot in the basement to another, but never out the door. B.J. O’Connor moved to her Newtown address 19 years ago, and admitted she has probably got at least a dozen “good-sized boxes” in her basement that are only infrequently opened. “Some are family mementos, but a lot of them are things from my former jobs. I know that some go back to my first full-time job. My husband, Dan, likes to joke, ‘God forbid our house should catch on fire. It will burn for weeks,’” she laughed.

It is not that she is so personally attached to her past work situations. As a social psychologist and adjunct professor, she keeps them for the information they hold that could be useful to her from time to time. “Some contain research material,” she explained.

The other thing that keeps the boxes from being purged, said Ms O’Connor, is fear. “It looked like a mouse might have been in them, so I’m actually afraid to look in them,” she said. “Some of those boxes, I’m confident I don’t know what’s in them, but they are still with us.”

Sometimes, “stuff” is lost in the shuffle and never unpacked. In looking for an item for her son’s school project, Alice Walsh recently came across a box she had forgotten existed. “I pulled out some Irish coffee mugs that I never, ever, ever have used. But they have moved everywhere with me for probably 20-something years. I think this is the first time they’ve been used. We found them just in time for St Patrick’s Day this year,” she said. “The cups were given to me by my mother. I’m Irish, so maybe I thought it might be bad luck to get rid of them.”

The cups are back in their special place now, said Ms Walsh, so it looks like they are “keepers” — if she remembers she has them.

Dishes are also the bane and blessing of Carol Spiegel’s life. “I have boxes of dishes that I got for my wedding 23 years ago that I never liked. But I loved the person who gave them to us, my grandfather.” It would seem that Wedgwood china would be easy to pass along, but Ms Spiegel said no, that will never happen. “The dishes have been in every attic we’ve ever had. Every time I look at the box, I think of my grandfather.”

Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese practice of placement and arrangement of space to achieve harmony, said Linda Lubinsky. But no matter how much she believes that we should toss out and make way for the new, she is glad to make room for her memory boxes wherever she goes. “We have kept boxes of stuff that moved to Japan and back with us, even,” she said. “Then the boxes stayed in storage in the US while we did some more moving to Paris and England and back to the US again.”

The boxes contain 30-plus years of love letters, notes, special T-shirts from college, wedding memorbilia, and even some of her trophies from riding when she was in school. “It’s stuff that you just can’t throw away. When we do get rid of things, we have three piles: stuff to throw, stuff that was brought into our lives for a reason and we are not ready to throw, and stuff that we keep. It helps when we clean out to know that everything doesn’t need to be thrown out.”

Hopes For The Future

Hopes for the future figure into one item that is packed away, said Ms Lubinsky. “I kept a dress that my aunt smocked for my daughter, Breanne. Maybe one day her daughter will wear it.”

It is the future that calls to Maggie Mahony, as well. She describes herself as “not much of a pack rat,” but what she has stored away in the attic are toys. “We’ve moved a few times, but the things I keep are things like American Girl dolls, Legos, Playmobil, Barbies. I have thousands of dollars of toys my kids have outgrown.”

Why hang on to toys that her kids will never play with again? “I’m keeping them for my grandchildren,” she explained.

There is another special box in the Mahony attic, as well, that has made every move with her. “Some of the books I had as a kid, my mom saved, and I read them to my kids. Now they’re up in the attic waiting for me to read to my grandchildren.”

In a case of “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure,” Ted and Tina Welsh have determined to find new homes for a lot of their “stuff” this spring.

“We decided we have to get rid of some of this stuff and thought how fun it would be to turn it into a way to commune with our neighbors,” said Ms Welsh, so they invited all of the families on King Street to their home March 21 to plan a huge all-street tag sale in May. “It will be a blast,” she said. “I think we’ll advertise it as ‘Two-Tenths of a Mile of Bargains.’” Eight of the ten other families on the block took the Welshes up on their idea and they anticipate nearly 100 percent participation. “We’ll have balloons on the mailboxes so people know who is taking part, and we are even going to have house-to-house walkie-talkies to help buyers locate particular items that we advertise.”

But as much as they are excited about a major clean-out, like everyone else, certain boxes will just be shuffled to a new corner of the attic. “I went up in the attic to see what kind of stuff we had for the sale, and I found a box of stuff from when I was a child. I took it with me when I got married. It’s amazing what I valued as a kid, and a little funny,” said Ms Welsh. “I have a scrapbook that was filled with advertisements; these papier maché banks; and I still have my original Barbie doll — you know, the one in the black and white striped swimming suit. She’s in perfect condition, except I did pierce her ears….”

Poking through the box stirred up many memories, she said. “I came across a spiral notebook. My friend and I were crazy about horses when we were little, so this notebook is filled with names of what we would name our horses, if we had any. It’s so silly. But it must have been so important to me.”

A delicate seashell necklace that an elderly neighbor had once given to her is still nestled in the drawer of a jewelry box. “When I opened up the jewelry box, the smell brought me right back in time,” she said.

The Beatles were big when she was growing up, said Ms Welsh, so she was not too surprised to pull out blow-up Beatle dolls that she had won at the Easton Fair one year, and Beatles trading cards. Why she preserved these items, she is unsure. “It’s not like I ever thought this stuff would ever be valuable. It’s just who I was. I won’t be selling this stuff.”

What appears to have outlived its usefulness retains its value in its capacity to rekindle memories. Sometimes, it is the “stuff” that is there to remind us of who we were, where we have been, and of our dreams. And what is a more valued possession than memory?