A Letter from the Trenches of Materialism

Today was a good day. Today I felt proud and confident of my decision to scale down and pursue a minimalistic, tiny house lifestyle. Today I reaffirmed my commitment to detaching myself from material possessions and living a more mindful life.

Today I helped my 92-year-old great-aunt move.

I grew up across the alley from my great-aunt--whom I call Auntie--and her house was always a second home to myself, my siblings, and even our family pets. A former children's librarian, her wit, intellectual curiosity, and freedom of self-expression made her a role model for me. She still is. She's the kind of person you almost can't help but love.

But like everyone, Auntie has her flaws, and I spent most of today mired in the fruits of one of them: her stuff. She is incredibly materialistic. 

Eight or so years ago, Auntie moved out of the four-bedroom house across the alley and into a retirement home. Today she moved from her two-bedroom apartment in the retirement home to a studio apartment in an assisted living community.

She hadn't wanted to downsize from her house to her apartment, and it showed. That apartment was filled to the brim with furniture, keepsakes, family heirlooms--and junk. Total, absolute junk, totally and absolutely mixed in with all the rest. Thumbing through sheaves of old papers, a decades-old car rental agreement would hide a hundred-year-old letter from an ancestor fighting on the front lines of World War One. Her jewelry boxes contain plastic Mardi Gras beads cheek-by-jowl with treasured family heirloom jewels. The china cabinet in the living room had long lost its function of actually displaying fine china and was simply stacked with dishes. Two entire sets of fine dinner service for twelve, including teacups and serving dishes, were jammed in there amongst worthless knick-knacks like an unmarked glass ashtray and made-in-China holiday-themed ceramics.

And she can't bear to get rid of any of it. Ancient, yellowing, blank greeting cards? Keep them--"I need them for birthdays and holidays!" Clothes that she will never, ever fit into again? Keep them--"They're so nice and they were expensive, I can't just give them away!" The umpteenth disposable coffee cup, half-used Chapstick or package of pantyliners? Keep them--"They're so handy to have around!"

Today while we were packing, Auntie all but refused to sit down and relax and let us do the work. She insisted on tottering around the apartment with (and sometimes dangerously without) her walker, making sure we weren't throwing anything away. We managed to convince her that some of the most undeniable junk was worth tossing--years-old sales flyers, envelopes that had sealed themselves closed--but had to resort to subterfuge for the rest. One of my aunts took her out to a three-hour lunch while Mom, my other aunt, and I sorted things to throw out or donate to the thrift store. Most of her stuff, though, we agreed to take back to her house to store; in reality, this means that we'll just wait until she passes on before we sell or donate it. We don't dare do otherwise, because she remembers and, I think, really cares about all that stuff. We're positive she would notice the absence of, say, one of her long-unused cake pedestals and be upset to learn we had dispatched it.

Mom related to me an exchange that she had recently with Auntie. Mom had asked her why she kept so much stuff--why she didn't get rid of the stuff she didn't use. Her answer: "But... I can't get rid of it! It's who I am!"

I know she is so much more than that. She has always been more than that to all of us. But if your own self-image is based around your possessions, and you've gotten to the point where you're 92 years old and still feel that way... well, there aren't a lot of arguments that can convince you to change, are there?

It's already exceeding a 14-hour day for my mother and aunts, helping Auntie move. She hired a team of professional movers for about eight hours, and I helped for about six. And that's not even including the hours her live-in caregiver had already put into packing, or the unpacking, the hauling stuff to the thrift store, and the eventual disposal of the stuff that we've brought back to her house.

Stuff is a burden. Even if you don't feel that way about your own stuff, believe me, when you're 92 years old and your family is helping you, it will burden them. And if the stuff itself doesn't burden you, the financial worries that come from needing space to store the stuff will; money has always been a prime worry for Auntie, which would have been somewhat alleviated if she'd been able to downsize to a one-bedroom apartment instead of two. Or if she and my late great-uncle--who remained childless--had simply built themselves a smaller house to begin with and never accumulated that stuff at all.

And--because I'm tired and don't feel like digging up stats and sources--I won't even start on the burden that our possessions place on the planet.

But I feel good. If excessive materialism was ever just a vague, hypothetical bogeyman, it is no longer. And I can no longer envision a happy life where materialism and accumulation of stuff run rampant. My path is clear, and I like that.