I’ve heard about the mob scene at a house. That sounds pretty awful.

I’m sorry to hear your grandmother is on the decline. Having experienced the fast and the slow, fast is better for those left behind.

The hardest thing for me to weed is books. I have over 600 now and even clearing out a couple of shelves and taking them to the public library for donation was difficult. I have a very visceral connection to most of my books. To hold them is to recall passages or where I was when I bought them or read them for the first time. I have a set of small B&N classics that will forever be my time in graduate school, a couple of books from a professor in undergrad when struggling through my thesis. And this doesn’t count the short paperbacks that I read and turn over to friends with regularity. If I keep one of those–it’d better be good.

My mom does professional organizing and such and she’s much better at it than I am. She likes to remind me a) not to purge too fast b) shoot for 10% when you’re paring down a collection c) if getting rid of things, try for one thing a day and put it in a closed container that you can’t see. If you really miss it–that’s one thing but most of us don’t.

I remember when my great-grandma died. I was only seven years old, just tall enough to peek over the edge of the coffin and look down at this old woman whom I never recalled seeing before (there’s a photo of me at a couple months of age visiting her). Turns out she was someone wonderful whom my mom still misses terribly, but for me, she’s just this woman in a box. :-/

Afterwards, my grandma took me to her mother’s house and I was shocked by what I saw. Dozens of relatives (also strangers to me) were ripping everything out of the house! People fought and argued over the slightest thing. Here there is no will, no attorneys, just a small coal town in western Virginia.

It has left a bad taste in my mouth. I feel fortunate at my age that there is very little or few people who would be interested in my belongings. I have a running list of whom would appreciate what, but I have not sat down to make a will yet.

I go through clothes once or twice a year, getting rid of anything that hasn’t been worn in a couple years. I am not a huge “stuff” keeper, so I don’t need to weed my junk too often. Books are another story. And, weeding at work is kind of fun since the books in our library are VERY old and definitely need weeding!

The first is for clothes: I don’t add any new hangers to my closet — I stopped adding them when I reached a reasonable amount in college, about six years ago. If I want new clothes, I have to give old clothes away first to make room.

My second method of weeding my stuff is moving. I am at a point in my life when I change apartments and houses about every two years. I finally have all of my stuff in my apartment, with nothing at either of my parents’ homes or in storage. Packing is a huge hassle, and I get rid of a lot of things each time I start that process.

My biggest struggle is weeding the books that I own, ironically. I do try to weed them, but I usually can only choose about one or two a year that I don’t “need”. It’s ridiculous.