Decluttering and the Easter Robot

Recently my wise and wonderful friend Nancy, a professional organizer, helped me declutter my basement. Things had been piling up down there for years, and looking at the mess was overwhelming. I needed some support and a little kick-start.

Right away Nancy made me feel better by telling me that I didn’t have a major problem with clutter. She said getting it under control was just a matter of moving things around so they were up off the floor and visible, and then it would be easier to let go of a few items. (A few? Nancy is oh, so kind.)

We started with things that were no-brainers to get rid of. It gives you momentum and a sense of satisfaction. In this category were VHS tapes on which I’d recorded episodes of Thirtysomething (I now own the DVDs), card games with missing cards and puzzles with missing pieces, and a box of old sweaters that a mouse had nested in (nothing like decomposing mouse to make your priorities clear). Incomplete craft projects that dated from when Maggie was a Brownie (Maggie is twenty-one), the inside of an ice-cream maker, and three old phones we replaced because they weren’t working right—out they went.

Next we tackled things that might be useful to someone else, but no longer had a place in my life. The extra-large Rubbermaid bin of holiday ornaments that was labeled “Did not use in ‘05” had additions in different colored marker that read, “ ’06, ‘07, ‘08 and ‘09.” Clearly these gems were not necessary to our festive celebration.

Then things got a little more complicated. We opened a box of cassette mix tapes, probably 75 of them, that my darling Pop (who passed away nine years ago) had made for me. As far back as junior high school, I have memories of us sitting on the floor in front of the stereo working on them together. When I went away to college, spent a year in Italy, got married, had children, my father kept the tapes coming. They’re a record of my life on fragile plastic strips.

“What do they represent to you?” Nancy asked, and after thinking for a minute I realized that when I looked at the tapes, I saw the time and the love that Pop put into them. But I also realized that these cassettes were not my father, and maybe I could preserve that feeling with fewer of them. I chose a half-dozen favorites and kept the boombox with the cassette player, just in case.

Nancy was kind as we unearthed faded old baskets. “But I got an arrangement of cookies in that when Rorie was born!” (Rorie is twenty-two.) She was tolerant of the stuffed pink snake, Sam, I used to sleep with as a toddler.

Overall the process was easier than I had imagined. Seeing my stuff through the eyes of a considerate helper made it much easier to make decisions about it. Out, out, out.

We were almost ready to call it a day when we came to Bunnush. Bunnush, a wind-up little floss rabbit with soft ears and a round fluffy tail, was in my very first Easter basket. Now he looks like this:

When I held him up, Nancy gave a stifled yelp.

“What is that?” she gasped.

“It’s a rabbit,” I answered.

“It looks like something out of the Terminator movies.”

I guess that’s true, but I still picture Bunnush with his smooth brown flocking and his fluffy fluffy tail.

In the end I had two vanloads of stuff to donate, much less dust, and determination to never again accumulate such a mountain of stuff. Nancy seemed to think I had done well.

But I noticed that before she left, she placed Bunnush on a bookshelf in my office, where I pass him a few times a day. I think she expects me to get tired of looking at him, but I won’t. I’m happy about everything I was able to let go of, but Bunnush? He stays.

After all, if you wind him up just right, he can still hop a few steps.