April 2023
By Richard Fleming
One of the keys to successful aging is maintaining a positive attitude. A sunny disposition. We need to seek any rays of light piercing the darkening clouds, even if they are few and far between. Thankfully, at least one sunbeam shines brighter for older folks than for the young. We should value it. We should cherish it. I am referring, of course, to the ease of decluttering.
Many activities of daily living become harder as we age. Cooking. Cleaning. Fixing broken items. Maintaining our health. Driving. Exercising. But getting rid of unused, unneeded items becomes much easier.
Clutter is the bane of everyday existence. High-quality medical studies confirm living in a cluttered environment creates mental stress. For example a study in the Journal of Neuroscience in 2011 found: “Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout the visual cortex, providing a neural correlate for the limited processing capacity of the visual system.” Translated into English, clutter causes anxiety.
Clutter also adversely affects physical health. An untidy home disrupts sleep patterns and lowers energy levels. While no study has examined a messy environment’s effect on life expectancy, clutter increases stress hormone release. This leads to increased blood pressure and worse immune function. We can reasonably conclude that more clutter today means fewer tomorrows.
But for young and middle-aged people, getting rid of rarely-used items can be difficult and stressful. What if they give away something they may need one day? Like those sneakers they bought 15 years ago. The last time their feet occupied those shoes might have been 12 years ago, but it is always possible the urge to jog may arise. What about the pressure cooker languishing at the back of a kitchen shelf for the last two decades? It might be needed to whip up a pot of beef stew a few years from now. And that can of caulk that has lived on a garage shelf since the Bush Administration. Bush the senior, that is. The caulk may be useful some day, even though it’s probably hardened into a rock.
I feel sympathy for the non-elderly living among us. For them decluttering is so challenging books are written about it. TV shows explore techniques to tidy up and dispose of unneeded items. Experts offer advice on how to get rid of useless stuff occupying space in cabinets, closets, garages, attics, under staircases, and on random table tops. Most importantly for the younger generation, decluttering techniques are offered by respected influencers on TikTok and Instagram.
Thankfully decluttering is – or should be – a cinch for us Boomers. We can simply and safely ignore the various “rules” experts proclaim should guide the decluttering process. Many of these recommendations use time-based criteria for deciding what to eliminate from one’s home. For example, there is the popular “5 By 5 Rule” which says if you don’t anticipate using something in the next five years, don’t spend more than five minutes thinking about whether to get rid of it. Maybe this rule is helpful for Millennials and Gen X’ers. (Gen Z has not had enough time to build up their clutter inventory.) But when it comes to us older folks, five years is overly optimistic. For me at age 71, if I don’t anticipate using something in the next two years, it is time to say goodbye. And the older I get, the shorter the time window will become. If I make it to my early 80s, one year will be more than adequate as a cutoff. If I see 85, a six-month horizon will be generous.
But I understand that future usability is not the only factor in decluttering. There are items you may want to keep despite knowing you will never need them. Like your high school diploma. Or an old but familiar sweater. That ancient yellowed newspaper clipping where you were mentioned as a participant in some civic event. Emotional ties to such things run deep. I get it. But these things are cluttering up our lives.
The way to reduce anxiety about getting rid of keepsakes is to think of our poor children and grandchildren. If we’re being honest, we know they have absolutely no interest in holding onto our mementos. They will remember and love us after we’re gone, but not because they inherited a bunch of junk they have no use for. They will remember and love us for the lives we shared and the love we provided. Actually, our kids and grandkids will probably love us a little more after we die if they don’t have to spend weeks cleaning stuff out of our homes. This is why my wife keeps telling me to start clearing the garage. So our kids and grandkids don’t have to.
Photographs fall into a special category. Our heirs may want to hold onto them. But they are not interested in inheriting boxes of print photos. They have no enthusiasm for photo albums. They only want digital images on a thumb drive. So my recommendation is to digitize all those family photographs from the past century. If doing this is too challenging, your kids will be happy to explain the process. Or they can use social media to identify someone nearby who can do it for you.
To wrap up, decluttering is the key to a healthy, happy, long retirement. We don’t need books to explain why. We don’t need influencers to explain how. We just need to get started, and fairly soon. While we still can. At least that’s what I keep telling myself when I think about our garage. There are times I even start walking towards it, but then I recall the 30-year accumulation of clutter in there. At that point I usually find several good reasons to veer off in another direction. My personal experience is forcing me to accept one other crucial fact about aging. Growing old has little impact on the eminently human trait known as procrastination.
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As always, well said. I recently came to the realization that the world (or my country or my family) would not suffer a major gap in information if I recycled the files of the trips I took, the articles I thought about writing or for that matter the articles I did write and the file as equipment manager for the church league softball team I was on. My children may want the files I kept on their activities up to an including college and the IRS might want information on my taxes for the last five years, but other than that, a lot of the paper I’ve kept seems less necessary to keep now.
Total agreement about the importance of decluttering generally for the sake of our kids.
However, do be careful with photos. I was asked to write an article recently about a painful life event, and I no longer had the photos the newspaper hoped to include. You never know with photographs, I now realise!
Is this excellent advice also a metaphor for mental Decluttering? I think we can all benefit from letting go of the many worries and distractions that preoccupied our brains in the past…
The hard part of decluttering is getting started. When we were thinking of moving from the big house where we raised our children, I committed to one hour—-just one hour—-a week to start the decluttering process so as not to move things we would never use or need. Usually once I started, I would be motivated to finish a drawer or box, even when my hour had passed. That was 8 years ago, and that process has also motivated me to buy less in this phase of life. I can also highly recommend your local Buy Nothing project. Amazing how many people want and need things I no longer need, with the added benefit of keeping things out of the landfill. Thanks for your post. Maybe it will motivate me to restart my weekly decluttering project!
I have hung onto so many things using the future use excuse, but lately have used the closing window of time criteria to finally decide to let (a few) things go. It always helps with the anxiety if you can find someone who wants it/can use it, even if the giving amounts to little more than taking it from your pile and adding it to theirs. The area of Kansas City I live in has a wonderful custom of leaving unwanted objects at the curb. Oftentimes some neighbor or stranger sees value in your unwanted property and will help you by spiriting it away in the next day or two.
I have been decluttering since I retired a year ago. I have donated , threw a lot of stuff I don’t need anymore. I had a hard time letting go of some of my favorites but eventually got rid of them. Life is a lot simpler ,happier.