Friday, September 16, 2011

Sentimental Clutter


Can someone please tell my why I felt compelled to keep this violin-shaped ashtray that belonged to my late grandfather?


It’s not the only memento I have of Pop, not by a long shot. I don’t have any memories of him using it—he’d quit smoking long before I came along. And I don’t smoke.

I suppose I kept it because Gram put a handwritten label on it, explaining that it had been a birthday gift from my dad in 1959. (He’s been gone even longer than Gram and Pop.) With the grief of Gram’s passing still raw and fresh, I cried over the violin ashtray and stuck it in a box to take to my new home.

That’s how I’ve accumulated too much sentimental clutter.

In his book The Secret Life of Hoarders, Matt Paxton writes, “Hoarders aren’t slobs who don’t care about being clean. They are people struggling with overwhelming emotional issues. A pile in a hoarder house isn’t a pile of stuff; it can be many things: a pile of sadness, a pile of quitting, or sometimes even a pile of hope. It’s never really about the stuff, hoarders are just confusing their possessions with their emotions.”

Sometimes, it’s a pile of loss.


Now, my house does not look like anything you’d see on those reality TV shows about hoarders. And yet . . . nearly five years after marrying Bill and moving into his house, there are still big piles of my boxes in two rooms. (That’s in addition to all the boxes on the garage shelving and in a shed.) Okay, so it’s not all sentimental clutter, but that’s a good portion of it.

On the mesmerizing (and now defunct) TV show Clean Sweep, Peter Walsh sometimes dealt with this issue. He’d stand, facing the offending pack rat, perhaps with one hand on her shoulder, pin her with his eyes, and say, “Can you love your grandmother . . . and cherish her memory . . . without keeping all of her stuff?”

Yes, Peter, I can.

Gram has been gone for five years now. It’s become easier to let go of her everyday possessions, carrying them out of my house in a trickle of cardboard boxes, donating them to various thrift stores and garage sales.

That ashtray’s days in my house are numbered.


Gram’s sticker also mentions another gift Pop received: a pipe from his lifelong friend Ralph, given in 1948.

When I was a very little girl living with Dad and Gram and Pop, Ralph used to visit. I’d wait until he was comfortably seated in the living room and then snatch the foil tobacco pouch out of his left shirt pocket. I’d retreat just out of reach, open the pouch, and inhale deeply of the tangy scent. I loved it. Although Pop had a small rack of pipes in the closet with the reel-to-reel tape recorder, there were no pouches of tobacco, fragrant or otherwise, in our house.


Pop and Ralph had become friends as young men working in a mine in eastern Oregon. The men worked in teams of two. One day Pop told the boss he was quitting; his partner was too reckless. The job was not worth his life.

“Well, is there anyone you think you could work with?” the boss said.

“Well, yes,” Pop said. “I’d work with Ralph Townsend.”

And work together they did—first in the mine, then on the Jordan Valley Irrigation District, and eventually in laundromats they owned together. Ralph even dated one of Pop’s sisters for a while. Ralph named his son Stan after my grandfather. Stan became a mechanic and eventually passed the business along to his son, Jason. I’ve been taking my car to them for the past eleven years, ever since I moved back to town. Wes, my grease-monkey stepson, even worked there for a while.

So in honor of a friendship that began in the late 1920s and still has ripple effects today, I think I’ll keep the pipe.


Brandon, my other stepson, thinks the violin ashtray is pretty cool. He never knew Dad or Pop, so it wouldn't be a family keepsake for him. But if I decide to get rid of the ashtray, he’ll take it. And he’d use it, too—he smokes.

I think I’ll give it to him . . . no strings attached.

So tell me . . . How do you decide what to let go of and what to treasure?






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