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Organized Hoarding

June 1, 2021 9Comments

Imagine about 30 more of the largest container seen here…..

In my last blog I dealt with the process of deciding to move out of a home I spent a significant part of my live inhabiting. This blog is the part II of that.

In order to move out of a home, there is a large part of the process I can best describe as purging. In particular when downsizing (which since I’ve begun a career in real estate is now known as right sizing), most things you cannot take with you. You may take a few precious items as I did. Perhaps get a storage unit. However, you cannot keep everything, no matter how hard your sentimental heart tugs at you.

After my first blog, someone I worked with at WNBC wrote me saying how his parents were down sizing. He mentioned his Dad was having a particularly hard time parting from the home in which he tended to the yard and landscaping for years. It’s a sense of purpose and pride for many of us guys. They then said something to him that resonated with me, and hopefully him as well. They told him, at least this decision is yours to make and you are not being forced to do it by circumstances. His wife and life partner is still with him. I realized with that statement, that I really didn’t have a choice. Sure, I could have lived alone in a four bedroom home and heard my voice echoing for the rest of my life. It wasn’t a matter of if I moved out of the house, but more a matter of when.

The time had come to make that decision and follow through with it. Financially I was taking a beating and to be perfectly honest with no job or income for 18 months, something had to give. Pretty bad timing to lose your job of 24 years and then have a pandemic hit a few months later. Once again, I say this not to complain or illicit any sympathy, as many had it much worse than I did. I’m just stating the facts of the situation and what drove me to finally pull the plug on the house.

So now I have to decide, what if any, furniture and large items I’m going to take from my home and attempt to squeeze into our apartment. Some decisions were quite easy. The living room & family room furniture as well as dining room furniture were all much too large and not the style of a city apartment. As for what was in my man-cave dwelling, in terms of furniture, that too could all stay at the house. I did however, have various sports memorabilia that was coming with me or going into storage.

What was interesting, was the strange things I would find, not remembering when or why I kept them. I found an Al Roker phone card from his WNBC days that must have been a type of promotional deal. Newspaper clippings from when I may have been quoted about a particular weather situation. So many thank you notes written from school children with their artwork in response to countless appearances I would make. In many cases those visits turned out to be one of the most rewarding parts of my job. With no place to store these notes, cards and letters, it really pained me to have to part with them.

Forget the seemingly endless collection of VCR tapes of shows from celebrity interviews I did. From Elton John to Grandpa Al Lewis and so many inbetween. One of my favorites was a 60’s memorabilia show I did for Weekend Today in NY. A few of the stars from the old 60s TV shows came by as well as Marty Balin from Jefferson Airplane/Starship. We ended the show sitting on this plastic orange and yellow furniture singing Aquarius – Let the Sun Shine, along with Kent McCord from Adam-12, Brandon Cruz from the Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Johnny Whitaker of Family Affair and Erin Murphy who played Tabitha on Bewitched. Talk about a surreal moment. It was a 60’s flashback, only without the drugs.

I could go on and on about my NBC experiences, but that’s not the purpose of why I’m writing this particular blog. While certainly many memories are intertwined with my home and my career at NBC the reason I’m writing this blog is a bit more personal. Parting with a home of that many years is like another mourning process. It’s another funeral. Or in some ways for me, it felt like a series of funerals, as each time you uncovered another sentimental part of the past you had to relive it, then let it go, and say goodbye. To say that it was emotionally exhausting would be a huge understatement.

As I went into more closets and storage spaces in the house, from the attic to the basement and garage and everywhere in between, I began to realize something else. My wife, was an “organized hoarder”. She always kept a clean house and generally orderly. However, she apparently had a difficult time parting with many things. Primarily paperwork & bills. I found a file filled with telephone bills from when we lived in Cincinnati Ohio back in 1993. Tax returns and bills of all kinds with receipts going back to 1984, the year we were married. Booklets introducing her to her first job at Chase Bank from 1983. Christmas cards and yearly Christmas photo cards from the 80’s thru 2015. Huge Rubbermaid containers, one after the other after the other stuffed with these useless files of past information. I counted up to 30 of them and then gave up. Can you say SHREDDER!!!!!!

Then I started running into the more sentimental things she kept. From the first artwork any of the kids had made, right down to a doodle on a napkin from my son, probably in his teens at the time. Outfits from the kids Halloween years to the first Tutu Carly wore at a dance recital. Then the notes exchanged between Carly and my wife, when they would engage in epic battles and fights. It became so difficult to not stop and read everything and relive it again. If I did, I would still be there today sifting through things.

***This was the chocolate cigar box celebrating my son’s birth.***

I’ve kept quite a few of those notes and some cards that were especially meaningful. I found a note I gave my wife to open on our wedding morning that she kept. I found notes from friends of hers with endearment and a couple of a different sort. More about a falling out, but she still decided to keep those for some reason.

The tougher ones were the notes she wrote and left for us that clearly indicated she knew she was losing her battle for her life. She left a note with some children’s books for Jeremy to read to his kids for when he becomes a Dad. Notes to Carly and me, leaving little items attached to some.

It’s a funny thing for me. I can part with many material things, eventually. However, I have a very difficult time parting with things that have the handwriting of the person that is no longer here. It just feels so personal to me. It’s their creation, their thoughts on paper. Clothing and possessions have a connection, but they were only worn or possessed by that individual. Not created. If that person didn’t exist, then that handwritten note wouldn’t either. As silly as some of the notes were. Like reminding us to leave the door open on the washing machine to let it dry out and not get musty or moldy smelling while she was away in the hospital. The handwritten notes to me are the energy and essence of the person.

Let’s just say I have more reading to do. My mom has been generous enough to lend me some storage space at her place for the time being . Eventually I will have to do some sifting and thinning out of the material, but I’m trying to buy some time. It’s a process….a laborious one at that.

As I write this, I know I’m still trying to process everything. I have not completed that task for sure. I will get there, but I know it’s going to take time. The band-aid has been ripped off and now the unprotected healing phase begins.

I guess the piece of advice I would like to pass along to any of you who own a home for many years, is periodically purge. Purge….purge…purge. It will make your life easier in the end when you finally have to move, or for your kids when they have to clean out your home if and when that day should come. You need to build a lot of time for clearing out a home if you’re selling it. I would say a week for every year or two you’ve lived there. It’s physically and in my case, even more so, emotionally exhausting.

So it’s forward I go. The only direction I know that keeps me growing and gives my life value. I wish for the new owners of my house to make it their home full of joy, love and peace.

Finally here are a few of the things & pictures (which I will always keep), that made me pause while I was cleaning out the house.