Sorting Things Out

I am surprised how content I feel in my apartment in this retirement “home.” In my former life, when I lived in apartments at various times, I always longed to move into a house – my own house. That’s why, when I returned to Texas three years ago, I bought the house on Meadowcrest Drive. At age 77!

Now I am once again in an apartment – and I love it!

I am surrounded by my favorite things. During the month before I moved, I spent day after day sorting through my possessions. I kept a few things for sentimental reasons. On the shelf in my kitchen are my ceramic cats, including a porcelain one which belonged to my Grandmother Pattie. Below it is the framed “Sunbonnet Girls” series which belonged to my Great-Grandmother McDonald.

The samplers made by my grandmother and by Ilene Timmerman went to Illinois with my daughter when she came to claim other treasures from my house. I don’t have room for them here – if I want a comfortable and attractive place to live.

I ruthlessly discarded items I would not have room for in the apartment. When Don and Mary cleared out our mother’s house, in the linen closet they found “brand new” sheets that Mother bought but never used. When they opened the packages, the fabric was so old and rotten, the sheets fell apart in tatters. I sent to Goodwill a pile of clothes I will never wear again, pots and pans (why did I need three ten-inch skillets?), and a brand new Christmas tablecloth.

Now I sit in my living room and watch through the window as new neighbors move into the apartment next door. They are an older couple. Yeah, even older than me. They lived for 25 years in a large house in Greenville and now are moving into a four-room apartment identical to mine. Day after day I saw their son and daughter-in-law pull dollies loaded with boxes, hundreds of boxes and big plastic bins. I wondered where they put all that stuff.

When I met the daughter-in-law on the balcony that connects the five apartments on this third-floor wing, she shook her head and said, “She is going to have to get rid of some of it. Boxes are stacked up in every room. There isn’t any more space to put anything.”

Soon after I moved in, Robert, our maintenance man, came to put up a extra towel rack in the bathroom. He commented on my neat apartment. He said people who have lived here for years have so much stuff crowded into their apartments that they can barely move around.

Why do people keep things they no longer need?

I try to keep my friends. I don’t need to keep “things.”