The Things We Keep: What a maximalist has learned from sorting through a lifetime of someone else's things

 

I don't know if you guys have noticed, but I've been a little bit quieter on social media lately. I've been posting a little less. I haven't been doing as many of my cute, funny reels and my "cringe" reels that I actually really enjoy making. And the reason for that is life has been a little bit heavy lately.

I've been sorting through my mother-in-law's estate. She passed away this past June. My husband is an only child, and this happens to be his busiest season at work, so he has been extremely busy. Which means that a lot of the responsibility of sorting through the house and getting it ready has fallen on me. The goal is to get everything sorted, cleaned out and ready so that once we're through the probate process, we can move my father in.

So, I've been spending a lot of time in her house.

It's a small, modest house. Nothing extravagant, but comfortable. And there are some really beautiful things in it. There are some gorgeous antique clocks. A Steuben vase. She and her late husband had a real love of music, so there are eight-tracks and records and cassettes and sheet music and musical instruments. She had a love of Vincent van Gogh, so there are several prints by him and other similar artists. There are some genuinely beautiful things in this house.

But she never threw anything away.

And I mean that almost literally. There are thousands and thousands of pieces of paper. Bills. Receipts. Empty envelopes from bills she had already paid. Old paperwork. Notes she had written down during phone calls about appointments that happened twenty years ago. Promotional pens. Magnets. Free T-shirts. Little flashlights. Old medications that she had stopped taking years ago but never got rid of. And boxes and boxes and boxes of photographs. Just... things. Things that, at first glance, have absolutely no reason to still exist.

And I've been surrounded by all of this while simultaneously trying to run a business built around finding, collecting and selling old things. Which has made this experience... complicated.

Because I'm a maximalist. I love stuff. I love old things and things with history. I love the feeling of walking into a room and seeing evidence of actual people who live there and experience life, rather than walking into a magazine-ready, perfectly styled template of a house. I don't want a house that looks like it came out of a catalog (although, feel free to feature my house in a magazine if you think it is cool-wink). I want the weird object. There is always a what the f--- is that? object in every room in my house. At this point, there are probably twenty or thirty of them in every room. I want the painting you can't stop thinking about. The antique that reminds you of your grandmother. The strange little object that makes someone stop and ask, Where did you find that? Or, What is that? Preferably both.

And I make a living off of that. I make a living encouraging people to bring more of those things into their homes. So, standing in my mother-in-law's house, surrounded by everything, has made me do a lot of reflecting on my own relationship with stuff.

A small house can contain an enormous life.

That's something I keep thinking about. Her house is not big, but the amount of life contained inside of it is enormous. And honestly, it continues to feel more enormous the longer I sort through it.

There are pieces of my husband's childhood everywhere. I found his baby shoes. A little baby bracelet with those tiny letter beads spelling BRIAN. His silver cup with his name engraved on it. His first lost tooth. Photographs from different stages of his life. Little reminders of birthdays, school, vacations, field trips, holidays and all of those ordinary family days that probably didn't feel particularly important when they were happening. But looking at all of them together, they meant something.

Suddenly, as I've been looking through and sorting all of this clutter, the story started to make sense. A lot of the things she kept weren't clutter to her. They were evidence. Evidence that he had been little. Evidence of the life they had built. Evidence of the pets they loved together, of trips they had taken, of holidays and birthdays and ordinary Tuesday afternoons that had probably felt completely insignificant at the time.

There is something strange about holding an object that means absolutely nothing to you, and then realizing what it meant to someone else. And then having to make a decision about what to do with that little piece of history when the person who gave it meaning is no longer here.

I've had so many moments like that over the last few months. Because the truth is, some of these things don't mean anything to me. They meant something to her. And, if I'm being completely honest, I have wondered: If she were standing here going through this with me, would they still mean something to her? Or would she look at some of these things and wonder why the hell she ever kept them in the first place?

I don't know. And that's one of the hardest parts. Because she isn't here to tell me. So I'm left standing in her house, surrounded by pieces of her life, trying to figure out which things are memories worth carrying forward... and which things are simply things.

The uncomfortable part

So, sorting through her home was uncomfortable. There were so many moments where I would pick something up and think, Why the hell did she keep this? Why the hell would she not get rid of this stack of bills? Why the hell did she keep this random knickknack? And, to be honest, there were times when I literally cussed her out. Standing in her living room. Talking to myself. Talking to her. Why did you keep all of this shit?

And then I would immediately feel guilty about it. Because who am I to decide why she needed to keep something? What if she were standing right beside me, watching me sort through her things? What if she were horrified that I was throwing away the belongings and collections she had spent her entire life accumulating? What if she were horrified that I was even looking through them?

Those thoughts made me cry. Almost every time I went through her house, there was another drawer, another box, another pile that brought up some combination of anger, guilt, grief or overwhelm. There was guilt over going through her belongings. Guilt over cussing her out for having all of this. And guilt over throwing things away.

That's something about going through an estate that I don't think I understood before this. I'm not just cleaning out a house. I'm making decisions. What is important enough to keep? What might be important for someone else to have? What should go to an estate sale? What goes to someone in the family? And what goes in the trash?

And sometimes you have absolutely no idea whether you're throwing away something that is completely meaningless or something that would have broken her heart to lose.

So when does keeping become too much?

Throughout this process I've thought a lot about scarcity, and the scarcity mindset. I don't know if scarcity was the reason she kept what seems like absolutely everything. I can't know that. But I found drawer after drawer of promotional items. Free pens. Magnets. Flashlights. Little things that had been given away. And it made me think about the psychology of free.

If something costs nothing, it can feel wrong to get rid of it. But what if we need it? What if we might need it? What if it's useful someday? 

I'm sorry, but at some point, keeping something stops being about whether you actually want it. It becomes about whether you can bring yourself to let it go.

That distinction has really stuck with me. Because there is a huge difference between keeping something because it matters and keeping something because getting rid of it feels wrong.

And then I'd turn around and open another box and find something completely different. That little silver cup. The little bracelet with Brian's name on it. His first tooth. And suddenly, none of that mattered. These things mattered.

I don't care how small or insignificant the object looked. They mattered. Not because of their monetary value, but because of the story they hold. And that is something I have always believed about vintage and antique objects. I've just experienced it time and time again in a completely different way while sorting through my mother-in-law's house.

The actual object isn't always the treasure. Oftentimes, the story is. And sometimes that story is just yours. And sometimes it's a shared story.

I found a few items that I've decided to keep for myself. A tiny hand-blown glass vase with hand-blown iris flowers. A little wooden puppet we got in Italy. A beautiful gold aspen leaf ornament. And what makes some of these things especially meaningful to me is that many of them were things we actually bought for her. Little souvenirs from vacations. Small thank-you gifts because she watched our cats while we were away. Little things that reminded me of her, or of something I thought she would love.

And some of them are simply things where I can see the beauty in them. I can see her style in them. I can see the way she loved things.

These aren't necessarily the large or expensive items. I found some of those, too. But those aren't the things I'm keeping. I'm keeping the small things that, when I hold them, remind me of those trips. That remind me of her. That remind me of a particular time in our lives. I've brought them home, and those objects are becoming little time capsules in my own home.

And that's what I want to keep. Not everything. Just the things that tell a story about our life together. Or about her. Or about the things she loved.

The emotional part nobody warns you about

When I'm sorting through her house, I feel every emotion imaginable. I've felt anger. I've felt completely overwhelmed. I've cried because there was just so much. I've cried because she's gone. I've felt guilty for throwing things away. I've felt guilty for cussing her out. I've felt relief when a room finally started to look like a room again. I've felt proud of how much I've accomplished. I've laughed at some of the ridiculous things I've found. And then I'll find something completely ordinary that makes me stop and have a moment. Or a tear.

Sorting through someone else's life is not a straight line. It's not just sort, throw away, donate, keep. Those aren't really the piles you're making. You're sorting through objects and memories at the same time.

And that is what has made me look so differently at my own things.

Because I am a maximalist. I collect things. I love things. I love texture. I love oddities. I love weird things and cool things and color and art. I have a house full of things. And I still intend to.

This experience hasn't suddenly made me want to live in a minimalist house. Or a house with nothing in it. Or, as I like to call it, the beige factor.

If anything, it's made me even more certain that I want a home filled with personality, with history, with texture, with things I love. I want the weird object. I want the art. I want the old furniture. I want the things that make people stop and ask, Where did you find that?

But this experience has made me ask a different question.

Why am I keeping this?

Not, Is it old?

Not, Could I sell it someday?

Not, Was it expensive?

Not even, Could I use this someday?

But:

Why does this deserve a place in my life?

Because I think that's the distinction I'm starting to understand.

A house can be full without being full of things that matter. And a small house can contain an enormous life. My mother-in-law's house has taught me that those two things can exist at the same time. It can be full of things that mattered deeply to someone, and it can also be full of things that simply accumulated because no one ever made the decision to let them go.

So maybe I'm not learning that I need less.

Maybe I'm learning that I want more meaning.

More things that tell my story. More things that remind me of people I love. More things that make me smile when I walk past them. More things that make me stop and remember.

And fewer things that I'm keeping simply because I don't know how to let them go. Fewer things I'm keeping because I might need them someday. Fewer things I'm keeping because they were free. Fewer things I'm keeping because throwing them away somehow feels wrong.

I'm still trying to figure out what that means for me. I'm still standing in her house, box by box, memory by memory, trying to decide what gets to come forward.

And maybe that's what this experience has really been teaching me. Not just about my mother-in-law. Not just about going through someone else's things. But about me. About my own stuff. About the things I collect. And ultimately, about the things we leave behind.