Shedding stuff

Today I reached a milestone in living in the aftermath of my mother’s death. Nearly 4 months to the day after she died, I have finally dealt with all the Stuff. Not the probate things – that’s ongoing – but the actual material Stuff which comes one’s way when somebody dies. It’s amazing how much we all accumulate. I still remember when I had so little that one trip in a car was enough to ‘move me’.

In many families, when someone dies, there’s a stage when people get ‘something to remember X by’. I spoke the other week to someone in a family where, after the grandmother died, every family member had a time slot to go into her house and select something. That, of course, was a pandemic way of handling it. In other people’s lives (or, rather, deaths), objects are handed out by the Keeper of the Memories – ‘She always wanted you to have this’, or ‘She would have wanted you to have this’. I’m an only child and it’s all down to me. My mother never expressed any ideas for who would want what, not least because, at some level, she hadn’t accepted that she would ever die. I have kept many photographs and letters, and some special objects, and I’ve integrated my mother’s sewing box into mine, and her kitchen equipment into my kitchen. I’ve kept two pieces of furniture with which I grew up, and which I like very much, and which match the period of our house. But that’s it.

For some people, the only solution is house clearance. We did that for most of my late aunt’s belongings. There was little of value, sentimental or otherwise. She had been in a ‘care’ home for the last two years of her life and her flat was quite a sad place. Other than some very heavy furniture, there was little left. Like my grandmother, and unlike my mother, she had deliberately wound down her purchasing as she felt death coming nearer: I still remember gran announcing that she had decided she had enough hats to ‘see her out’. My aunt’s jewellery, most of which had been my grandmother’s, had been stolen five years or so earlier by someone whose accomplice distracted her into looking in her garden for a ‘lost dog’. I still fume about the evil of that theft, carried out on a woman in her 90s who was always willing to help other people.

For my mother, however, house clearance wasn’t the right option. There were plenty of useful objects in very good condition. I was determined that everything she had should go to someone who wanted it or who needed it, and that nothing would go to landfill unless there were no more options open.

This wasn’t easy to achieve, in July, when lockdown was still in place. Charity shops – and my mother loved browsing charity shops, so they were a logical place for much of her Stuff to go to – were closed. We had a memorable hour queuing in the car for the local Oxfam Warehouse to drop off a load of Stuff, because at that point there wasn’t anywhere else open. Then the local charity shops began to reopen – this process is still not complete – and I discovered that, although the amount they’d take was limited, turning up at the back door of one particular shop with a bag and a gift aid sticker and uttering the magic words ‘It’s only one bag, and it’s gift-aided!’ would succeed every time.

Meanwhile, though, as I worked through the bags, I’d found an even better method. My mother was well aware of how much Stuff there was in her loft, brought when she moved to the flat but never even opened, and she occasionally floated the idea of having a garage sale in our carport. We never did it, though, because when it came to it she was very unwilling to shed anything. However, after her death, we set up tables at our house and had a ‘free shop’; no payment, donate to charity if you like, but don’t worry about it. This was extremely successful. Our neighbours browsed and chatted about mum as they did so. They took things and then (and even now) stopped off to say ‘I used your mum’s casserole dish last night and I thought of her!’ This was (and is) very moving. One family makes a point of serving things on mum’s plates if we go round for a socially-distanced cup of tea in their garden. Another family took a set of mugs to use in their holiday house – and ended up bringing them back again because they liked them so much.

People we’d never met before came along as well. Some examples:

• a man who asked if it was OK if he took a tin opener. Of course! ‘Thanks – I’ve been living with my mum since lockdown and I’ve cut my fingers on her tin opener several times already’
• a man who came on his bike to take away a dinner service, a few plates at a time
• a woman who asked if she could take the remaining kitchen cutlery for the cookery room at the local school.

Small items of furniture could form part of the ‘shop’, but some I moved on by sending pictures to our road’s email list. Some large items went by word of mouth but others – sofa, table, bed – were a problem. At that point, the various charities who will collect were just coming back on to the scene, but were not going into properties, so we would have had to manoeuvre everything downstairs and leave it in the flats’ car park – and, if something went wrong or it rained – manoeuvre it back up again. But then one of the neighbours who works in debt counselling told us she had a client with nothing. Just nothing. And some volunteers with a van came and took all these large items, with some clean bedding and some crockery, to this client.

Meanwhile I discovered the two Facebook sites locally for ‘free stuff’. It was a surprise to find out just what people really want: above all, wool blankets. Mum hadn’t even unpacked the three she brought from her previous home. They went within a few minutes of announcing their availability. Even a half-piece of blanket that had once been used as an extra layer over the mattress went at speed. One of the people who came in too late to have a blanket asked if we could deliver, and said she had nothing. I offered her some alternatives, made up a box of things and took them round; she is living in social housing in one of the many new developments that isn’t really near any shops, let alone charity shops, and was happy with what I took to her.

I advertised on Facebook those disability aids which had been bought, as opposed to loaned from the local Social Care team (hint: these teams are excellent). The woman who took a commode chair told me her situation, with two parents needing more help but not willing to admit this; free things they would accept, even though they weren’t prepared to define themselves as needing them. So I then offered her directly a chair and a device for getting out of bed: she was very happy to have these.

Meanwhile, as clearing proceeded, the friend who’d stored her belongings in the loft came round to sort them out. They’d been there for at least 8 years and sadly she still doesn’t have anywhere to put them. In a full day of sorting, she designated one carload of bags to keep, and another friend drove to pick them up a few weeks later. That left – I don’t know, over 20? – very large bags for charity shops or dumping. I don’t like dumping, so anything potentially useable went to the ‘free shop’ outside our home. Several boxes of CDs went to a local school which is run solely on donations; they also took a lot of pens and folders.

This story wouldn’t be complete without our own turning-out. Clearing somebody else’s belongings makes you much more aware of your own baggage. Plus we, too, had more than we realised in the loft of that flat. Through the ‘free shop’, charity shops and Facebook, it all went. I discovered the joys of ‘Swedish death cleaning’ – a method in which you consider not just if something brings you joy, but whether those who have to clear up after your death will like it or even know what to do with it. I haven’t yet invested in Margareta Magnusson’s book on this, but I’ve applied the principles. Clothes, bedding – all sorted. I’ve thrown away piles of research notes. I’ve even taken a fresh eye to my books. The first question is whether I want to read them again or whether I need them for what I am writing at the moment. If not, well … time to say goodbye to them. I’ve already made four or five trips to the local Oxfam bookshop (you have to pre-book a slot to drop off a maximum of four bags or boxes each time) and I’ve another trip scheduled for next week.

And today? The last items? Reading glasses. I knew that Lions Clubs collect and sort these for eye clinics across the world, but like so much else that collection was paused because of the pandemic. This week, a local Lions Club person announced on Facebook that she’s collecting again, so today I took four pairs of my mother’s glasses and another four of my own, and thus got rid of the final bag. In the past, on the very rare occasions when I’ve been doing radical tidying, my mother’s comment would be ‘Are you all right? Or are you not long for this world?’ On the first: yes, definitely. On the second: how can any of us know? But I feel a lot lighter.