This is another post in a series exploring the top reasons we keep stuff, according to David Ekerdt, professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of Kansas. Dr. Ekerdt has spent his career interviewing and studying people, digging into their attachment to their belongings and trying to understand why we love our things so much. He developed this list of the top reasons we keep things:
It seems useful.
We think it is worth money.
It gives us pleasure.
It represents us.
We may need it one day.
It was a gift.
Conservation is a virtue.
Legacy – we want to leave things to people when we die.
We keep because we can.
In this post I am exploring this idea that we keep things because we are taught that conservation is a virtue.
Two of my favorite books, Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell, tell the story of a wealthy midwestern family in the 1950s. The two books, by the way, were combined into a terrific movie, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, which has an all-star cast including Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and Kyra Sedgwick
Mr. Bridge has built a successful law practice. Mrs. Bridge is a society woman, a “pillar of the community,” who is extremely focused on appearances, and how she and her children present themselves in society. She worries, throughout the books and the movies, that her children might appear spoiled.
One of my favorite parts of Mrs. Bridge involves a hair comb. Mrs. Bridge is deeply troubled to find that her teen-age daughter, Ruth, has thrown away a comb. She confronts Ruth about it. Ruth says the comb is old and dirty, and only costs five cents, anyway. Mrs. Bridge explains to her that she must clean out old things and conserve them. As she is describing the process by which Ruth should clean the comb, Ruth points out the window to the driveway, where her father is driving home in a brand-new Chrysler. When her mother leaves the room, Ruth breaks the comb in half.
Ruth Bridge’s character is really, in many ways, embodying the “American Dream.” She knows her family can afford to replace the comb, so she doesn’t worry about tossing it in the trash. Her father is a respectable lawyer who has worked hard all his life so the family can afford new combs and new Chryslers, along with anything else they want. Isn’t this why her father has worked so hard, she might argue, so that she doesn’t need to waste her time cleaning a five-cent comb?
But many of us are more like Mrs. Bridge and have it deeply ingrained us that we should never toss out an old comb. It still works, right? Then we should keep it.
What’s the right answer? Do we keep everything that is useful and never replace anything? Or do we proudly toss out anything when we want something new? Are we a Mrs. Bridge or Ruth Bridge?
Most of our clients are in their eighties. This generation grew up at a very different time, culturally, than the rest of us. The Great Depression was still a recent memory. They had this mantra instilled in them: conservation is a virtue. And now they have all the combs to prove it.
The problem arises when our clients need to move. Now all the combs, and all the other things that have been dutifully kept, must be reckoned with. But all of these things are still useful, so it becomes very hard for our clients to part with any of it.
In the process of managing moves for seniors, one of the biggest issues is time. If you have the time, you could probably find a home for most of these items. You could put things you aren’t keeping up on an online marketplace or online auction site; and if anything doesn’t sell, you could do the research to find worthy organizations that want the rest. Maybe one charity wants your combs, another wants your gravy boat, and a thrift store two towns over will take the vacuum cleaner.
But this all takes a lot of time. And it’s pretty rare that someone planning a move has a lot of free time. So our clients have to make some hard choices. Sometimes those old combs have to be discarded. This breaks people’s hearts. My only advice is to make some commitments to yourself now, long before you need to move.
For one thing, commit to donating things on a regular basis. Figure out places near you that take donations, find out how to donate to them, and make it part of your regular routine. Don’t wait until you have a ton of things to donate – get into the habit of doing so when you have even a small amount to donate. If you finish a novel that you know you won’t read again, drop it off at the donation center. If you buy a new sweater and realize you need to make room for it, donate a couple of other sweaters.
If you want to sell a lot of things, your best bet is to figure out how to sell things online. This can be difficult and I know that learning a tool like eBay or Chairish.com can be stressful and time-consuming, but it may be worth it for you to learn this now, so you won’t be frustrated later. If you know anybody in their teens or twenties, I am guessing they can show you how to do these things.
The key is to put these habits into practice well before you ever need to move, because these things take time and time is something you won’t have when your move is coming up.
