Traverse City Record-Eagle

Kathy Gibbons: Northern Living

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December 5, 2009

Kathy Gibbons: Some things are kept

I'm in deep decluttering mode. While there are still things I love and hold dear and would buy more of if I could -- dishes, clothes -- more and more I find myself looking around and feeling overwhelmed by "stuff."

My basement is stacked with boxes that haven't been opened in years. I have tax records from the 1980s and baby furniture that I'm saving for grandchildren.

The kids' closets are still the kids' closets, full of their stuff, though one is married now and hasn't lived at home in two years. You could count on four hands the days his sister has spent at home in the last year.

And I'm still smarting from the last move three years ago, when three grueling days of loading and cleaning finally culminated in a frenzied pitching of an accumulation of God knows what from the garage into my brother-in-law's dump truck.

So it is in this take-no-prisoners frame of mind that I go from one storage room to another, gathering things I no longer need with the intention of donating them at the nonprofit organization where I was working at the time.

I pick up a round canvas needlepoint of a cat, made by my deceased mother-in-law. I haven't had it on a wall for more than a decade.

Now, I'd done this before and always put it back on the shelf out of guilt. I had even tried it in a garage sale once and it didn't sell.

So back in storage it went, to sit for another year or five.

No more of this, I think. This time, it goes into the box to be donated. Maybe someone else will use it. It's not that I don't like it. It's pretty. I just don't have a place for or need it.

About a month later, I'm at work at the nonprofit, walking through the area where they display the used items and see that the volunteers have put out my mother-in-law's needlepoint.

It's on a shelf with about 30 decorative framed pictures of various sizes. Good, I think, I'll be glad to see someone have that.

Now, I had to walk through this area daily, usually a dozen times a day.

And day after day, there it sat. The picture of the dancer went and the watercolor of fruit disappeared, but the needlepoint remained.

Each time I saw it, I felt more guilty.

And then came the day when, there it was, the only thing out of that whole pile of wall decorations left on the shelf. All by itself. I knew what I had to do.

So it's back at home again. In a new spot, hung on a wall, in fact.

Other things may go, but the message on this one came through loud and clear.

Kathy Gibbons can be reached at gibbonskath@yahoo.com. For more of Kathy's columns, log on to record-eagle.com/kathygibbons.

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