The Struggles Decluttering My Relative’s Things- Part 1

Last week, I decided to give myself a birthday “gift”. That gift isn’t nothing super expensive but I thought it would improve my life a lot. That gift is to clean out my relative’s things and organize my own.

Back in 2016, a relative I was taking care of passed away. After that relative passed away, I inherited their things. Back then, I had plans to declutter their things and reorganize my own, but I had to put those plans on hold due to my own health crisis. Now that it’s 2022, I am both healthy enough in my body and mind that I thought I could tackle the huge job of organization.

Three days after I started, I knew I needed to stop. It was hard to let certain items go, but that wasn’t why I needed a break. It’s because I was so exhausted from cleaning my relative’s things that I needed a break!

Cleaning is not an easy chore. It can also be very physically strenuous. I am an athletic person, but dealing with the huge amount of stuff my relative left behind has not been easy for me to do. After two days of working, I needed to stop and let my body rest.

While I let my body rest, I began to take a hard look at the things my relative valued. It is hard for me to understand why they valued the things that they did. To me, it makes absolutely no sense. Some of the things do, but there are quite a few things that don’t. I could blame my relative’s desire to keep those things due to sentimental reasons, or the illness that caused them to die.

Seeing so many of my relative’s things that I not only want to get rid of, but need to, made me wonder if I keep too many things myself. I have a lot of hobbies, sewing being one of them, so I need more things that I think a non sewer or someone with as many hobbies as I do will need. Still, I can’t help but wonder if I am hanging onto certain things more because I was sick when I purchased them and never got to use them “properly”.

Trying to figure out what I should keep and what I shouldn’t from my things has been hard. I want to purge my things, but I know that’s not a good idea. Instead, I want to focus on something I am more confident in getting rid of: my relative’s things.

My plan is to go through my relative’s things, decide what is worthing of being kept and what isn’t. After that, I’ll divide the things into two different categories: One where anything I think is usefulness goes and one where anything is not useful but sentimental goes. Then, I’ll go through everything, comparing my own things to what I have left of my relative’s things and see what I should keep or get rid of.

Since I became so tired from decluttering (And my allergies acted up really badly due to the dust!) this process will take some time. I am hopeful I will be able to clean enough things out that I will have the energy to put up my Christmas tree this year! Even if it means the rest of the house is still a mess.

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!