Top reasons we keep stuff: we may need it one day

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:

1. It seems useful.

2. We think it is worth money.

3. It gives us pleasure.

4. It represents us.

5. We may need it one day.

6. It was a gift.

7. Conservation is a virtue.

8. Legacy – we want to leave things to people when we die.

9. We keep because we can.

Today we’re looking at reason number 5: we keep something because we may need it one day. It’s the old saying: I’m saving this for a rainy day. Or: This could really come in handy someday.

Sometimes it makes sense to keep something because it could be useful one day, but oftentimes we save too many things with this thought/hope in mind. We look at something we don’t use now – something we have no current use for and have never needed – and we rationalize a reason to keep it for a time when we may need it in the future.

Years ago we moved Dan and Sue from their home outside of New York City into a luxury condo near Lincoln Center. Sue loved Lincoln Center and had always dreamed of living within walking distance. Now that they were retired and didn’t need their large house, she had convinced Dan to try living in the city. Before the move, she purchased season tickets to the opera and ballet – her two favorites.

Dan was a little reluctant to move, and his reluctance revealed itself when we sorted with him in preparation for the move. The new apartment had less storage space and no basement, so Dan and Sue had to part with a lot of their stuff.

Sue sorted quickly and got rid of a lot of things. Dan resisted. He insisted on a moving too much clothing, too many books, and too much kitchenware. Sue let this all pass and assumed they could always do more downsizing after the move, if they found they had brought too much.

The problem arose when Dan insisted on bringing his exercise bike. The bike would take up so much space in their new bedroom that they would have to sacrifice other furniture, like a comfortable chair or settee.

I asked Dan about the bike and how often he used it. He admitted that he had only used the bike a couple of times, just after he had bought it ten years earlier. And, as he knew, his new building had a full gym, including exercise bikes in much better condition than his old one. But somehow Dan was convinced that he would start using his bike once he got to New York. Sue didn’t feel like pushing back on this, so we moved it.

A few months after the move, Sue called and asked us to donate the bike for them. Dan was willing to give it up because he still never used it. He had found he really liked getting his exercise by taking long brisk walks through Central Park. He was gone for an hour each afternoon, people-watching and enjoying the beautiful sunsets – when the sun just starts to tuck itself behind the tall buildings lining the park. One afternoon after he returned from one of his walks, Sue asked if he wouldn’t mind getting rid of the bike. He didn’t mind in the slightest.

I was fascinated by this whole process. Dan had, for months, maintained that he would need this exercise bike, even though there were good reasons supporting the fact that he was very likely to never use it. But somehow, I realized, by holding onto it temporarily, the bike helped him get through the move. It helped him hold onto an image of himself during this transition period – a period of time that causes stress for almost all of our clients. Only after he safely made it through the transition could he finally let go of the bike.

Another category of objects we see a lot of (mostly) female clients hold onto are baby clothes and baby toys they have saved from when they raised their kids. They generally seem to hold onto these in hopes that their kids will have kids and that those kids will need it all, someday. They can picture themselves as grandmothers, holding a baby wearing the same cute little outfit that they dressed their own kids in years earlier.

I understand this and I think it’s fine to keep a few very special baby things in hopes that you will someday get to share them with a child you will love. The problem arises when the one or two things becomes ten or twenty things, and suddenly you have a storage issue because you hope, one day, to have grandchildren and you hope those grandchildren will be able to use these things.

A word of warning: by holding onto a lot of baby things, you may be signaling something to your kids. You may be putting pressure on them to make decisions they aren’t ready to make, such as whether or not to get married or have children. And you may be playing into some stressful dynamics. If they are in a relationship, their partner may not be on the same page about having kids, for example. If they are not in a relationship, by keeping all these baby things you may be making them feel like there is something wrong with them because they should be with someone and should have kids.

Keeping things like this can be described as “aspirational keeping”: I am keeping something because I will use it one day or when my life changes and I will need it.

There’s a lot to explore on this topic. I suggest that, instead of just keeping things you investigate why you are holding on to them. If you look at something and say to yourself: “someday I will use this”, ask yourself these questions: Are you certain something will change in your life and you will need this, or are you just hopeful that something will change and you will need it? And: why is it so important to you that this change take place?

If you haven’t used your exercise equipment in years, ask yourself why the future will be different? If using the equipment has been a goal of yours for years, what’s been stopping you? It will likely turn out the issue runs deeper than you think.

In the case of the people hoping for grandchildren, a good question to ask is: are grandchildren so important to you that you will be upset if you don’t ever have them? If the answer is yes, you may want to pause and focus on other ways you can start to imagine a fulfilling future. Because being a grandparent is not something you get to choose – it is something that is chosen for you, by someone else. It is completely out of your control. There are things you can control. You can find new hobbies or make new friends, or you can start another career if that interests you.

 Either way, we encourage you to always ask why you are holding onto something and to let the answers help you understand yourself and your situation.

Top reasons we keep stuff: it was a gift

Top nine reasons we keep stuff: It was a gift

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:

1. It seems useful.

2. We think it is worth money.

3. It gives us pleasure.

4. It represents us.

5. We may need it one day.

6. It was a gift.

7. Conservation is a virtue.

8. Legacy – we want to leave things to people when we die.

9. We keep because we can.

In this post we will be exploring reason #6: we keep things because they were gifts. Dr. Ekerdt has some thoughtful ideas on this topic. He asks us to think about whether we like the gift or not, and if we have positive feelings about the gift giver. If we like the gift and have positive feelings about the person who gave it us, there’s no issue. The gift makes us happy, so it stays in our home.

The issue arises when we don’t like a gift or when we have a complicated relationship with the person who gave it to us.

If we are close to the gift giver and want to avoid harming the relationship, but we don’t like the gift, we may feel like we have to keep it to avoid hurting their feelings and potentially damaging the relationship. In some cases, this may be the best option. Maybe your good friend gave you a vase that you don’t like, but the vase is relatively small so you can keep it out on display but tucked out of sight. This probably doesn’t cause much trouble, so you may decide it’s worth hanging onto.

But if the gift can’t be tucked away somewhere out of sight, you may find that it is bothering you to have to keep it out. You may find that the vase sort of annoys you each time you see it, and because you associate it with your good friend, you find that you feel slightly annoyed about your friend on a regular basis.

In this case, the gift – the unwanted object in your home – may actually be causing some harm to an otherwise healthy relationship because it is now infused with a lie – the lie that you enjoy this gift. Every time you see the gift, you are reminded of this lie and the lie could start to erode the positive feelings you have about the gift giver.

In this case Dr. Eckerdt suggests that you put the gift in perspective to your overall relationship with the person who gave it to you. You are close to this person, so you have probably known them a long time and you have probably exchanged lots of other gifts back and forth.

The best option here may be to give the gift to someone else – donate it or give it to a friend who actually likes it. If the gift-giver asks where it is, you can try being honest with them. They may be slightly upset, but your relationship is strong enough to withstand this. Or you can tell a little white lie – tell them it broke, for example. But you need to tread carefully here because you don’t want a lie to come between you and the gift giver.

A client of ours named Steve had a good relationship with his stepfather, an artist. His stepfather kept giving his art to Steve and his wife. Some of the art was quite large and Steve and his wife lived in a relatively small apartment. Steve and his wife had a decent relationship with Steve’s stepfather, but they did not care for his art and they didn’t want to hang the art in their apartment, so they took a slight risk.

They donated the art to a new homeless shelter opening in the neighborhood. The shelter was happy to have it because they didn’t have a budget for art. This made Steve and his wife feel good. So the gift itself – the art – actually had its intended effect: it made the recipients feel good. The risk was that Steve’s stepfather might ask about the art one day. Steve felt prepared to be honest about the situation, to an extent. He didn’t have to tell his stepfather that he didn’t care for his art, but he felt he could tell him they didn’t have room for it and that they found a terrific place for it where it would bring joy to others.

The situation is more complicated when you have a difficult relationship with the gift-giver. In this case, every time you see the gift, you are reminded of the difficult relationship. Suddenly you find yourself feeling negative emotions about the gift giver. If the gift is out on display in your home, you may experience these negative emotions multiple times a day. This will only make a difficult relationship even more difficult.

A client of ours (we’ll call her Lisa) had a complicated relationship with her sister. They had never been close as kids and when they got older, things just got worse. Lisa found her sister rude and unsupportive. Her sister married someone with a well-paying career, and suddenly became rather wealthy. As her wealth grew, so did the cost of her gifts. Finally, one year for Christmas she gave Lisa a very expensive ceramic gravy boat in the shape of a swan.

Lisa hated the swan. It wasn’t her style and she found it ostentatious. She knew she would never use it. She put it in a cabinet and only ever thought of it when she had to poke around in the cabinet looking for something she needed. As we sorted with Lisa and she showed us this swan, she became visibly agitated. She held it out at arms’ length and started telling us all the bad things her sister had done to her over the years and how much she hated this swan.

Suddenly she threw the swan down on the floor and it smashed to pieces. She started laughing! She was ecstatic. This act of destruction actually had a cathartic effect on her, and she joyfully swept up all the broken pieces.

The ceramic swan had been a reminder of the many bad feelings she had about her sister, and, every time she saw it, she would re-live those feelings. With the swan now out of her home and out of her life, she had one less reason to be annoyed about her relationship with her sister.

The discussion becomes a little different when you like the gift but have a complicated relationship with the gift giver. You can think about this in two different ways. On the one hand, you could enjoy the gift and quietly remind yourself, when you use it, that it is a positive aspect of an otherwise difficult relationship. Your enjoyment of the gift may help you feel grateful to have this person in your life and could help you appreciate their other good qualities.  

If, on the other hand, every time you see or use the gift, you have the angry feelings Lisa had, then you may decide that it’s not worth having this object in your life, even if you like it. You may want to sell or donate this gift and buy yourself something similar. It just may be that this is the better path to take – if it will help mitigate the anger you hold towards the recipient.

You may be holding onto any number of things you don’t particularly like but you feel you should keep because they were gifts. This is a common feeling – this sense of guilt or obligation. Many of us want to avoid the awkward discussion that may come up if someone asks about something they gave you. But instead of just mindlessly keeping the object, we suggest you explore the dynamic a little further and make sure that keeping the gift really is the best option or if there may be another way to handle the situation, a way that could be better for your relationship with the gift giver, in the long-term.

Top reasons we keep stuff: we think it is worth money

David Ekerdt at the University of Kansas is a personal hero of mine. He is a professor of sociology and gerontology who has focused his academic career on understanding why we keep stuff. He 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 has come up with a list of the top reasons we keep things:

1. It seems useful.

2. We think it is worth money.

3. It gives us pleasure.

4. It represents us.

5. We may need it one day.

6. It was a gift.

7. Conservation is a virtue.

8. Legacy – we want to leave things to people when we die.

9. We keep because we can.

I can’t decide which reason I like the best. I love them all because they all help me understand my clients, and myself, better. But the one that gets to me the most is the second one. We keep a lot of things because we think they are worth money.

We see this constantly. I’d say that this topic practically comes up on a daily basis as we are managing senior moves. I remember Gertrude, one of my first clients, fifteen years ago, had a painting hanging in her hallway. The very first time I met her, before she even showed me into her living room, she paused at the painting and said “this is worth a lot of money.”

We had a lot of work to do to prepare for her move. Her husband had dementia and she and he were making a very large move to Texas to be near their daughter. Back then, I used to do all the sorting myself (something our excellent staff does now) so I spent hours and hours sorting through clothes, closets, kitchen cabinets, and closets with Gertrude. And every time we passed the painting in the hall, she told me it was worth a lot of money.

Finally, one day I asked her about it. I asked her where she bought it and how she knew it was worth so much. She replied that she didn’t remember where she got it. She thought it might have belonged to a friend who moved. And she didn’t know the artist’s name, either. There wasn’t a signature or any other markings.

The reason she knew, without a doubt, that it was worth a lot of money is that her neighbor’s sister worked at an antique store and told her one day that it was valuable.

I tracked down the neighbor’s sister and sent her a photo of the painting. She replied with a short note: “I remember that piece of Gertrude’s. I thought it was pretty. I was sure I could sell it for a couple hundred dollars in my shop, but I had to close the shop a few years ago. People stopped coming in.”

We see this all the time. Movies, TV, and novels have inundated us with stories about an old, seemingly junky belonging tucked away in a closet that’s actually worth a king’s fortune. It’s a good story, this is why it shows up on so many reality TV shows. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen very often in reality. What happened in this case is much more common.

The shop-owner made an offhand comment about a piece being valuable. She was thinking she could sell it for maybe $400. She’d make about $100 in commission and Gertrude would make about $300. But Gertrude heard the word “valuable” and started believing she stumbled on that legendary golden ticket. She was thinking in the tens of thousands, Meanwhile, the window for even the low payday had closed. Things do not get more expensive simply because they’re older. There’s a right time to sell something. Clearly, the type of items the shop-owner was selling had gone out of fashion. She had to close her store and, with it, the likelihood of selling the painting.

I still did some due diligence. I sent the photo to a few auction houses and dealers to see if there was any chance of selling it. None of them saw any value. Nothing. It was really hard sharing this information with Gertrude. I could tell she didn’t believe me. She kept the piece. We moved it to Texas. I don’t believe she intended to hang it in her new home. I don’t think she particularly liked the painting. She had just become attached to the idea that it was valuable and couldn’t accept donating it.

A few years ago we were hired by Mary to empty her Aunt Fran’s apartment after she died. Fran had lived independently in Brooklyn, far from any other family. Mary used to love visiting her and was visibly upset by her death.

Mary was realistic about the fact that there wasn’t much of value in the apartment. She mostly just wanted to make sure we found any hidden family photos or jewelry, and she wanted us to donate as much as we could. But the first time she took us to the kitchen she hesitated and pointed to the lamp hanging above the table.

“This isn’t a Tiffany lamp, is it?” she asked. She seemed almost embarrassed to be asking, but there was also almost a pleading in her voice. It was most definitely not a Tiffany lamp. It looked like it was factory-made and was, in fact, not even made of glass. But Fran had told everyone, for years, that it was by Tiffany. She had warned Mary to make sure she got a good price for it someday, and not get swindled by some dealer looking to profit off of the lamp.

We always do need to check these things out for our clients so I sent photos of the lamp to an appraiser and asked if there was any chance it was by Tiffany, or even valuable. She confirmed that this was a manufactured lamp, probably factory-made. And she thanked me for giving her a good chuckle on a rather grim day.

When I told Mary (leaving out the part about the chuckle, of course) I could tell she was not at all surprised, but she was clearly disappointed. She joked that she was actually glad her aunt was dead because this news would have killed her.

A lot of our clients think their things are worth a lot of money because they paid a lot of money for them when they bought them. They can remember, sometimes to the dollar, how much they spent on something thirty years ago or more, and they assume it is worth even more now.

The sad thing about art, or furniture, or jewelry, or anything we own is that they are only worth money two times: when you buy it and when you sell it. When you buy it, it is worth exactly the amount you pay for it. When you sell it, it is worth exactly what someone pays you for it. How much money you spent on something a long time ago has no bearing on how much it is worth now. To find out what is worth now, you have to try to sell it and see what someone will pay you.

In Fran’s case, it didn’t do any harm for her to believe she had a Tiffany lamp because she loved it and she needed the light in her kitchen. But in Gertrude’s case, she looked at a painting that she didn’t like, multiple times a day, because she thought it was worth a lot of money, and then she paid to move it to Texas. It makes me sad to see this kind of misplaced attachment.

If you’re going to buy things for the value, treat it like you would treat an investment in the stock market. Pay attention to trends and try to buy low and sell high.

I wish people focused less on the monetary value of their belongings and appreciated them for their other values. Buy stuff you love, stuff that makes you happy. Maybe you’ll get lucky and, when the time comes, sell it for a lot of money. But, if not, you’ll know you still valued it for all those years.

Clothing, clothing, everywhere…but not a thing to wear

Almost all of our clients have a lot of clothes. And we get it. It’s a lot easier to shop for new clothes than it is to get rid of clothes you no longer wear, so the collection of clothing in your home is much more likely to grow than to shrink. And everywhere you look – social media, magazines, movies and television shows, etc. – people are wearing stunning new clothes that make you want to buy more.

There’s no simple solution to the clothing issue, but we have learned some techniques that you may find helpful.

How to sort your closet

As with any downsizing project, we always suggest making clothing sorting as easy as possible. The key is to break down the project into manageable parts. So instead of setting aside your full Saturday and committing to sorting all your clothes in one day, break the project down into sessions. Schedule three hours at a time and put the sessions in your calendar.

For these sessions, turn off distractions. Turn off phone notifications, don’t turn on the television, try to even avoid leaving your closet for the duration.

As you sort, be honest about clothing you haven’t worn in a long time. If it’s the wrong size, don’t keep it just in the hopes that it will fit you again someday. If it’s torn or needs a patch, give yourself a deadline – if you can repair it in the next three weeks, you can keep it; if not, just admit that it won’t be repaired and get rid of it.

Make a plan for the clothes you will not be keeping. In New York City we have a lot of thrift stores that will take gently used clothing. You will need to bag it up and bring it to them, so plan accordingly. If you own couture clothing, there are some great online options for selling your things, like the RealReal or Linda’s Stuff. But if your clothing isn’t couture, we don’t recommend that you spend much time trying to sell it.

Once you have sorted through all your clothes and (hopefully) reduced the amount significantly, be sure you have a plan in mind for not accumulating a lot more and winding back up at square one. Here are a couple of ideas for how to do this:

Make a commitment to not buy any new clothes

Select a period of time, like 90 days, and commit to not buying any new clothes for that period. The goal is to set yourself up for success, so be thoughtful about your plan. By putting an end date on your calendar, you may find it easier to handle having a limited wardrobe, because you will know that it is temporary. And you can even tell yourself that you’ll reward yourself at the end of the 90 days, by doing a small amount of shopping then.

Project 333

This is a minimalist challenge. It’s not for everyone, but I want to mention it for those of you looking to change your relationship with your clothes. Essentially, you sort through your clothing and select only 33 items to wear for three months. There are different sets of rules to this challenge, but most of them say you don’t have to include underwear, sleepwear, and workout clothing in the 33.

Don’t get rid of all the other things you own. Just pack it all up and put it away somewhere just out of reach. At the end of the three-month period you bring all your clothes out of storage and select 33 new pieces to wear for the next three months.

I have tried this challenge myself. I found it liberating to have fewer clothes to choose from each morning. The nice thing is that you can try it for three months and see if it works for you without committing to it long term.

Conclusion

Our tastes change, and our body sizes change. In a perfect world, our clothes would change with them. But, of course, the clothes remain exactly the same. It may be hard to admit, but if you have not fit in a blouse for two years, it’s not likely you’ll fit into it next year.  And while clothes do go in and out of style, that takes some time. Is it worth keeping something for 15 years in the hope you will want to wear it again?

It's counter-intuitive, but having a packed closet actually makes it harder to be creative with your outfits. It’s just too overwhelming. By focusing on the pieces you truly love to wear, you can have more fun mixing up the pieces. And you’ll always feel good about your outfits.

Decluttering is an act of love

Look around your home. You probably see a lot of stuff you love. Maybe you have bookcases full of books you’ve read or plan to read one day, maybe you have art that you have collected one piece at time. There is the furniture you have spent your entire adult life accumulating, and maybe an assortment of cool and unique decorative items you have curated. It’s all good stuff, right? Somebody would be lucky to have it all if you were no longer here, right? Your stuff would never pose a problem to anyone, would it? 

For fifteen years, my husband, Joe, and I have owned a small business in New York City clearing out estates and helping seniors move. People hire us for a variety of reasons – a parent has died and their apartment needs to be emptied, an aunt needs to move into a senior residence, a friend with dementia can no longer safely live alone and needs to make room in her home for a caregiver.

The one thing every job has in common is that there is suddenly a large amount of stuff that has to be moved, sold, donated, or discarded. And it usually has to be handled quickly. All of these things have been peacefully sitting in our clients’ homes, not drawing a lot of attention to themselves. But, suddenly, they become the focus of everybody’s attention, and they cause a tremendous amount of stress.

Here's the sad truth about our stuff. The vast majority of it is no longer worth anything. Especially if you have to sell it all within a deadline. In fact, removing our stuff is likely to take a lot of time and cost a lot of money. And it will all have to be removed someday. That day may come without warning but it will come with a price tag and a deadline.

All that stuff in your home, all that stuff you love, you have collected your whole life, right? It has taken you years to accumulate it all. Now imagine someone you love having to deal with it all in a matter of months, or possibly weeks.  

If you rent your home, would your landlord allow your family to keep the lease long enough for your family to sell every last piece of furniture? Most likely, not. If you own your home, how long do you think your heirs will be able to pay to maintain it while they try to find a good home for every piece of art? This is not a happy thing to think about, but I can tell you it will be a very real problem for someone you love. 

Most people aren’t aware that this will be an issue, but we see it every day. We know this problem is lurking inside every home, all over the world. Whether you’re forty, fifty, or eighty, you need to realize that your stuff will someday become a burden to someone you love.

I believe the greatest gift you can give to the people you love is to start taking steps to downsize your possessions now. We have blog posts to help, starting with this basic step-by-step guide: Decluttering: Where do I start?

What happens during a sorting session with Paper Moon Moves?

One of the main roles we play when planning a client’s move is helping our them sort their belongings so they can decide what to move to their new home and what to sell, donate, give away, or discard. We call these sessions (surprise, surprise) sorting sessions.

Some clients need just a few sorting sessions, some need many. It really depends on two things: how quickly they make decisions, and how much “stuff” they have tucked away in their home that needs to be sorted.

I use the word stuff to differentiate these items from furniture. Decisions about which furniture to bring are made when we prepare a floor-plan of the new home (discussed in this previous blog post). The “stuff” is everything else:  clothes, books, kitchenware, decorative items, photos, files, and anything else filling the drawers, closets, basements and attics of a home. 

We schedule sorting sessions to fit our client’s move schedule. If they are moving in a few weeks, sometimes we have to schedule a lot of sessions in a short period of time. But if they are moving months later, or don’t have a move date scheduled yet, the sessions can be spaced out. Each session is at least four hours long, but typically not much longer than four hours. 

At the start of each session, we select an area to work on. We always try to set realistic goals. If you aim to take on too much at one time it can be exhausting and discouraging. We  often suggest to our clients that we start with areas that will be easiest for them – in other words, stuff you don’t care all that much about. If a client is an avid reader and has a huge book collection, we may suggest starting with something else, like clothes. If they never cook, we may suggest starting with their kitchenware.  

Sorting is an exercise that isn’t familiar to most people. It can feel awkward and overwhelming at first. So if you start with things that are not incredibly important to you, you can get into the habit and get more comfortable with the process before you tackle the stuff you really care about.

Once we have decided where we will sort, we go to that part of the apartment and try to stay there for the duration of our session. We help our client get comfortable on a nice chair or sofa and then we start lining up objects for them to see. This may involve pulling things out of a closet and placing them up on a coffee table, right in front of our client, so they can make decisions about what is important to them.

As they decide, we pack up things they want to donate, or we make a pile of things they want to give away. The things they want to keep we put right back where it came from, so it’s ready to be packed by the movers.  

There really isn’t a short cut to this process, I’m afraid. There’s no magic wand we can wave to make all the sorting just happen without any effort because everything in a client’s home is something they have chosen and, thus, something with meaning to them. So everything needs (and deserves) to be looked at, to be touched briefly or held, and to be considered. Only then can a client make a good decision about it.  

We often get resistance to the process. “I can’t possibly get rid of any of my books” or “There is nothing in this closet I don’t need” are things we hear a lot, at first. But once we get into the work, most clients are able to let go of a lot of their things.

The best thing about this process is that we have solutions for the things our clients aren’t keeping. A lot of people (rightfully so) get upset if they think their possessions are going to go into the landfill. Our staff knows that there is a lot that can be donated, and some things that can be sold. The landfill is our last option.

It’s been very satisfying to see how happy our clients are once they have done some downsizing. This includes the ones who were most reluctant at first. Most often, it allows them to appreciate the items they kept that much more.  

Sometimes clients tell us it feels like their things are new again. And we almost never hear anyone regret parting with something. Usually they feel like a weight has been lifted. I used to be amazed by this but I now realize that most people don’t want a lot of clutter in their lives and really want to shed things. They just haven’t taken the time or invested the money into hiring a company like ours to take them through the process.

Recycling in New York City Part II – non-standard recycling

In an earlier post I covered the standard metals, plastics, glass, and paper recycling that can be put out for weekly pick up by the Department of Sanitation. Now we’ll cover some of the more complicated kinds of recycling. These items come up often with our senior moves business!

E-Waste

Most electronics cannot be bagged and left for recycling pick up, including:

• Desktops, laptops, servers

• Monitors, printers, scanners, hard drives

• TVs, VCRs, DVD players, DVRs

• Cellphones, tablets, eReaders

• Video games, consoles, digital picture frames

Instead, you have a few options for disposing of the above:

• Most large manufacturers provide free drop-off recycling of their products at their locations, including Apple, Best Buy and Amazon

• Most Staples stores offer drop off of various electronics at their stores, even if those items were not purchased from Staples. Please check your local store for details as some locations limit the amount that can be dropped off

• New York City has e-waste drop off sites in each borough and also hosts e-waste drop off events

• The Lower East Side Recycling Center (LES) hosts free e-waste drop off events in all NYC boroughs. LES used to have a permanent drop off location open daily in Gowanus but they closed this a few years ago but they list events on their website

• We encourage clients to wipe the data off devices before dropping them off to be recycled; there are companies that offer this service for a charge

Air conditioners

New York City will pick up air conditioners, refrigerators and other appliances containing CFC (chlorofluorocarbon) gas BUT you have to make arrangements to have the city (for free) remove the CFCs first. You can start the process by visiting the Department of Sanitation website.

Batteries

You can dispose of regular alkaline batteries in the garbage but not rechargeable and lithium-ion batteries. Stores that sell these types of batteries are required to take them back or you can take them to the city’s e-waste drop-off sites or e-waste drop-off events.

Composting

The city has a growing composting program. If your building participates, you can put food waste, plant, leaf, and yard waste in these bins and they will be converted to compost. Pretty soon composting will be mandatory throughout the city so it should become easier to participate.

Gas cylinders, fire extinguishers, and things containing fuel

These can explode inside collection trucks so should not be disposed of with regular pick-ups. Instead they should be brought to the city’s e-waste disposal events.

Paint cans

We covered paint cans in an earlier blog post.

Bulk disposal or recycling

Anything that cannot fit in a bin or bag is considered bulk. Until a few years ago, if you wanted bulk items removed on either trash or recycling days, you had to call to make an appointment but now we are all allowed six bulk items on each garbage or recycling pick up day. This includes furniture, but mattresses and box sprints require special handling. To dispose of a mattress, purchase a large plastic mattress bag from a hardware store, and wrap the mattress up before you leave it out. Rugs and carpets can be rolled up and secured with string and are considered bulk.

A few surprising things you can just toss with your garbage

Some things that you can dispose of in regular trash or recycling include: ink and toner cartridges, light bulbs (even fluorescent bulbs), alkaline batteries, and small appliances.

Recycling in New York City Part I – the standard things

It should be easy to recycle in New York, but – sadly – it’s kind of complicated, and the rules change somewhat frequently.

The Department of Sanitation (DSNY) maintains a good website: NYC Recycling Rules. One recent rule that is driving people a bit mad is that you are now not supposed to put out recycling until 8 p.m. the night before your pickup days if your recycling is in bags; or 6 p.m. if your recycling is in a secure container with a lid. Bundled cardboard and bulk items can be placed out any time between 6 PM and midnight the night before your pick up days. 

Also, if your normal recycling day falls on a holiday, recycling will not be picked up until the following week. This is something that that causes confusion and leads to bags being left on the curb all week (and people getting tickets for that!),

Now, the big question: what can be recycled with the city? There are two categories:

• Metals, plastics, and glass – all three mixed together

• Paper products – bagged or bundled separately from metals, plastics, and glass

Metals, plastics, and glass

Metals, plastics, and glass should be bagged or put into bins and should all be relatively clean. Metals and plastics that can be recycled include: cans, aluminum foil and packaging, wire hangers (paper needs to be removed), metal utensils, small metal appliances, nuts & bolts, pots & pans, milk and juice cartons (these seem like paper but should be bagged with metals/plastics/glass), glass or plastic bottles, jars, cups and containers, rigid plastic containers, CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, pens and markers, styrofoam/plastic food containers, tubes (cosmetics, toothpaste, etc), umbrellas. There’s more, but this is the general idea. 

Some confusing notes about plastic recycling:

• Plastic bags are a type of film plastic and should not be put in household recycling. Chains or stores larger than 10,000 square feet are required to accept back plastic bags from their store but the best idea here is to just get into the habit of bringing a reusable bag when you shop and avoid plastic bags as much as possible.

• Bubble wrap and dirty diapers cannot be recycled.

• Some plastics have a recycling number on the bottom, showing what kind of plastic it is. The Department of Sanitation doesn’t provide guidelines on these numbers so just ignore them and follow their rules instead. 

Some notes about glass:

• Some glass products cannot be recycled with the city, including drinking glasses and glassware, eyeglasses, glass tables, glass windows, light bulbs, and mirrors. Some of these items, if they are in good shape, can be donated to a local thrift shop, like Housing Works.

• Broken glass should be securely bundled up so nobody handling them will be injured. You can try taping them up with cardboard, for example. The bundle should be labeled “broken glass” and can be put out with the rest of the recycling.

Paper products

Paper products that can be bagged and left out on recycling days include: paper, newspapers, magazines, catalogs, phone books, cardboard cups, and corrugated cardboard boxes. Boxes should be flattened and tied with string or twine. Please note that even though some milk and juice cartons are made of paper, they have been coated with plastic and should be included with the metals/plastics/glass recycling.

If you have boxes that contained food, like pizza boxes or bakery boxes, you should make sure all the food is removed and then include the boxes with paper products. If you can’t clean off the food, the city would prefer you just throw the boxes in with regular trash. 

Photographs: We get asked this a lot. Unfortunately, because photographs are treated with chemicals, they cannot be recycled with paper products. They should be included with regular garbage.

Paper with little plastic windows (envelopes, for example) can go into paper recycling.

In a future blog we’ll cover how to recycle items not included above, such as bulk items, electronics, air conditioners, batteries, chemicals and paints, fire extinguishers, medical waste, and more. Stay tuned!

Paper and data security for professionals who handle sensitive client information

If you are in a profession in which you collect paperwork on your clients – for example, an accountant, attorney, financial advisor, or psychotherapist -- you may have paperwork in your home that could cause a lot of trouble if it fell into the wrong hands. 

At this point, we all know someone who has been a victim of identity theft. One friend of mine found that his tax refund had been directed to someone else’s account. It took him several years to collect the funds. Another friend’s email account was broken into. Posing as her, the hacker sent an email to her financial advisor and directed that a large sum of money be transferred to a new account.

It is hard to believe now, but our social security numbers used to appear on all kinds of paperwork. We have come across countless boxes of old pay stubs collected by our clients, with their social security number displayed right at the top of each stub. Some bank statements and medical records used to include them too.

I wish the IRS would find a way to encrypt our social security numbers on their documents, but they still appear on W-2s and on forms that need to be signed and submitted each year to process taxes.

The only solution is to stay on top of papers as we collect them, and not let the stacks of paper ever get so large that we lose control over them. 

Debby and Stan’s son, Mark, hired us to clear out a lot of the stuff that had accumulated in their Brooklyn home because he planned to renovate it for them. He intended to convert part of the ground floor into a large bedroom with a bathroom so they could eventually live entirely on this floor and not have to worry about stairs. This would allow Debby and Stan to age in place and avoid having to move in the future.

It was a great idea and we were happy to work with them. They were attached to their things, but they were not hoarders. Just heavy collectors. The main problem was that they ran their joint accounting practice out of the house and the business files had taken over a lot of space.

Stan was using what was once a beautiful formal dining room as his office, and Debby was using an enclosed porch that must have once been a lovely place to have breakfast, as hers. Both workspaces were packed with files, but the files in these workspaces were no match for the files in the basement. There, they had stored more than forty years of files from former and present clients. 

As we toured the basement the first time, I could see, without opening a single box or file, the names and social security numbers for many of their clients. They were scattered all over the place, in random piles.

I quickly realized how easy it would be for anyone entering the house to collect -- without much trouble at all-- enough private information on these clients to get away with some lucrative identity theft. 

As we worked with them, both Debby and Stan could see the need to shred all past client files and to secure the current files. We wound up bringing our on-site shredder to the house four or five times. This company has a shredder on their truck and you can watch your papers get pulverized right there on the street. It’s an activity I find oddly comforting. 

If you are in the position of keeping financial or tax records for your clients, you have a responsibility to protect this information. You are a steward of your client’s paperwork and, as such, you should stay on top of technology and find ways to handle their data and information with discretion and security.

The solution might be that you should not be keeping paper files on anyone. Or you keep just what you need and store them in locked cabinets. In this case, you should prepare a calendar of how long you will hold onto each client’s information, and you should have a clear policy for destroying your copies of their files after a stated period of time.

At the very least, you do not want to leave boxes of this sensitive information in your home to be dealt with haphazardly after you die. You should have a clear plan for them which has been expressly stated to your heirs. This will prevent them from suddenly finding themselves the caretaker of strangers’ sensitive information.

If you are keeping digital files with client information, you have the same responsibility – to protect the data you have. Please don’t think that because something is on your laptop it is safe from prying eyes. There are apps, services, and backup drives that you can use to manage data securely. And password managers are a hugely important tool. This article from the Wirecutter gives a great overview of some of the options available: Back up and secure your digital life.

It's a chore to keep on top of this data. But setting clear guidelines makes it a lot easier than finding yourself having to deal with it all at once. Or, worse, cleaning up a data breach.

What to do with collections?

We are often asked to handle large collections of things. We have seen all kinds of collections – whimsical, spiritual, very expensive collections, and very modest ones. We have handled herds of decorative elephants, delicate teapots, campaign buttons, Coke bottles, freebies given away by airlines, you name it. 

We all know how this happens. You express your love for something to a few friends or relatives and, suddenly, you find that you are the recipient of those cute little collectibles for the rest of your life. Every birthday and gift-giving occasion is another chance for them to present you with yet another item in your ever-growing collection.

These collections can be fun for the collector, but they can, sadly, cause some issues for family and heirs. The vast number of items in each collection can be difficult and expensive to manage. Where once the collector looked around and admired each item in the collection as a unique entity with a story about how it was acquired, now the heir just sees a large amount of things that need to be handled, and the collection has an emotional hold on everyone because it represented the deceased so strongly.

We have worked with a number of clients who believe that because they have worked so long to create their collection, the collection must have some re-sale value. They seem to believe that the sheer number of items should make the whole lot more valuable. Sadly, this is rarely the case. Once in a while a tchotchke has re-sale value, if it was created by someone whose work is in demand, but in general these kinds of collections have very little re-sale value.

Years ago, we managed the estate of Lorraine, a woman who had amassed a tremendous collection of owls. Lorraine had ceramic owls, glass owls, paper owls, and stone owls. She had mugs, pillowcases, and t-shirts covered in owls. She had paintings of owls, stuffed owls, and owls stitched by needlepoint. 

Her executor was her niece, Janet, who lived in Florida. Janet was really stressed out about all these owls. She had no room for this huge collection and she knew they had no re-sale value. But she had loved Lorraine dearly and the owls had been really important to Lorraine.

Janet agonized over this. The collection almost seemed to hold a power over her. We identified a reputable charitable organization that would take them all as a donation, and we even found someone willing to try to sell them on Etsy for Janet, but neither idea felt right to her.

Finally, we came up with a solution. We decided that everyone in Lorraine’s life should have one owl. So Janet gave one to every member of the family and one to every friend and neighbor Lorraine had liked. She gave one to the super in Lorraine’s apartment building, another to her hair stylist, and even one to her dentist.

It took a lot of time and effort on Janet’s part, but it was worth it in the end. Each owl gift was another chance for Janet to share a memory of Lorraine with someone else who had loved her. None of these people would have wanted the whole parliament, but everyone was touched to receive one owl to remember Lorraine by.

If you have a large collection of things yourself, please keep in mind how your heirs will manage the collection. You may want to make a list of the items in the collection – or at least the key items – and designate them as gifts to be given to friends or family after you die.

Or you may want to consider giving them away to people now. You can offer that everyone who comes over can look over the collection and pick their favorite piece to take home with them. This is truly, always, the best way to give things away – one at a time, with each piece going to someone who appreciates it. And one of the great advantages to doing this while you are alive is that you can go visit your collections wherever they have wound up. Imagine sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner at your cousin’s place and being served with your own owl napkin – which you gave to them to cherish on your behalf!

Understanding Senior Move Management

Understanding Senior Move Management: How Paper Moon Moves Can Help

Moving is often a challenging experience, but for seniors, it can be particularly overwhelming. Whether downsizing from a longtime family home, transitioning to a senior living community, or relocating closer to family, the process involves emotional and logistical complexities that can be difficult to navigate. This is where Paper Moon Moves comes in—a company dedicated to making these transitions smoother and more manageable.

What Are Senior Move Managers?

Senior move managers are professionals who specialize in assisting older adults and their families with the process of moving. Unlike traditional moving companies, senior move managers offer a comprehensive service that goes beyond just transporting belongings from one place to another. We understand that moving in later stages of life often involves much more than just packing boxes; it requires compassion, patience, and a deep understanding of the unique needs of seniors.

At Paper Moon Moves, we focus on easing the stress of moving by handling every detail with care. Our services include:

• Planning and Coordination: We work closely with you to create a customized moving plan that fits your specific needs. From deciding what to keep, donate, or discard, to scheduling movers and managing timelines, we take care of all the logistics.

• Sorting and Downsizing: Moving often involves downsizing, which can be an emotional and difficult process. We assist with sorting through belongings, helping you make decisions about what to take with you and what to leave behind. Our goal is to make this process as smooth and stress-free as possible.

• Packing and Unpacking: Our team ensures that your items are packed safely and efficiently. Upon arrival at your new home, we also unpack and organize your belongings, setting up your new space so it feels like home from the moment you walk in.

• Settling In: Beyond just unpacking, we help you settle into your new environment by arranging furniture, hanging pictures, and making sure everything is in its place. We aim to recreate the comfort and familiarity of your previous home in your new one.

• Emotional Support: We understand that moving can be an emotional experience, especially for those leaving a long-time home. Our team is trained to provide the support and understanding needed during these transitions, making the process less daunting.

When Might You Need a Senior Move Manager?

There are several situations where hiring a senior move manager like Paper Moon Moves can be incredibly beneficial:

1. Downsizing: If you’re moving from a larger home to a smaller one, whether it's an apartment, condo, or senior living community, downsizing can be a challenging task. We help you determine what’s essential, manage the sale or donation of items, and ensure that the transition is smooth.

2. Health-Related Moves: When health issues necessitate a move to a more supportive living environment, time is often of the essence. We can expedite the process, handling all the details so you or your loved one can focus on adjusting to the new setting.

3. Long-Distance Relocation: Moving closer to family or to a new city can be a daunting task, especially when it involves long distances. We coordinate everything from afar, ensuring that your belongings arrive safely and that your new home is ready for you.

4. Estate Transitions: In cases where a loved one has passed away or is moving to assisted living, we assist with the estate, helping to organize, distribute, and manage the belongings left behind. This can be an emotionally taxing process, and our team is here to offer both practical help and emotional support.

5. Aging in Place: Sometimes a home becomes too cluttered to navigate safely. Or you need to free up space for a caretaker to stay there comfortably. Or maybe you just want a bit more breathing room. We can help you downsize and organize your home. There's no move but your home may feel brand new when we're finished. 

Why Choose Paper Moon Moves?

At Paper Moon Moves, we understand that every move is unique. Our personalized approach ensures that your specific needs are met, and our compassionate team is dedicated to making your move as stress-free as possible. We take pride in handling the details, so you don’t have to, allowing you to focus on the excitement of starting a new chapter in your life.

Whether you’re planning a move in the near future or just considering your options, we’re here to help. Contact us today to learn more about how we can assist you in making your next move a smooth and positive experience.

The challenges with donating

In many parts of the country, it has become difficult to make donations. This frustrates our clients to no end, and I feel for them. But I also understand the issues all too well.

There are simply too many things to donate and not enough space to house it all. This has been happening for years but, in some areas, was accelerated by the pandemic when families leaving urban areas parted with many items quickly. We’re still feeling those effects. The charitable organizations we work with have been forced to become much more discerning over the years, only taking things that can be sold in their shops relatively quickly.

Space is another factor causing organizations to become more particular with what they take. If they accept donations for items that won’t sell quickly, then they will fill their shops with things that will sit around and collect dust for long periods of time. They are paying rent for their space, and they need to maximize their sales, so these items are costing them money.

Many places don’t have the resources to pick things up from donors. I they do, they are likely only going to spend the time and money on hiring a crew, arranging a pickup, etc. for items that they deem valuable. For more basic donations, it is unlikely you will be able to arrange a pickup. Or if you can, it may be tricky to schedule and involve very long arrival windows. You may be better off delivering the items yourself. This may require hiring a small mover, or loading your car and making multiple trips.

If you find a donation center willing to pick your things up, they almost certainly will not be able to pack for you. So you will need to do this before the pick-up date. Clothes need to be bagged into large recycling or garbage bags, kitchenware needs to be boxed up with enough protection to have the items safely delivered to the donation center. Books should be boxed up in small boxes because larger boxes become too heavy to lift safely. A typical book/small box size is 12” x 12” x 12”.

There are a couple of good reasons to make donations. Most importantly, when you donate your things, you get the satisfaction of knowing that your belongings will not be discarded but, rather, will go to a good home and be useful to someone.

Of lesser importance, but worth considering is the potential tax-saving benefits of making donations. Each situation is different, so I can’t give accounting advice, but you might call your accountant or do a little research to see if you can realize tax savings by making donations. If your donation is of a high value item, you may need to have it appraised first as the IRS may require paperwork attesting to the value.

I would not let the inconvenience of donating deter you from doing it. Knowing your items are having a second life, free from the landfill, is worth some effort. Unfortunately, be prepared that it may be a bit more complicated than a simple phone call.

Photos and memorabilia

Before digital cameras, we used to take rolls and rolls of photos at a single event. Then we would have it all developed, often ordering duplicates (the photo shops all offered cheap deals to get doubles, after all). After the photos were developed, we would pick them up and rip open the envelope only to realize that… the lighting was bad that day… or we were using the wrong setting… or didn’t have it on autofocus.  And we’d end up with two sets of dark, blurry photos. But, more often than not, we kept them.

We at Paper Moon Moves are giving you permission to toss all of these in the trash. And I will tell you why. Every photo is not a memory. In fact, sometimes having too many photos of the same event muddles the memory. One perfect picture goes a lot further than ten mediocre ones. And, somewhere, deep in those piles of too-dark, out-of-focus photos is the one really great photo. If you keep all of them, you may never be able to find it.

But if you discard all the bad ones, and save the good one, then you can enjoy it. You can put it in a special album full of great photos that make you happy; you can have it digitized and share it electronically with anyone you like, anytime; or you can save it on your phone or computer and look at it daily.

A lot of people worry about throwing photos away. It feels wrong to do so, somehow. But what we always try to remind people is that, when it comes to photos, less is better.

Elsie

Elsie was a lovely woman with a fascinating family history. She came from a prominent New England family that included some early American political leaders and people you learned about in elementary school, including a president.

This provided her a great sense of pride, but it also presented a problem. Because of her family roots, Elsie felt like she had to hold onto everything related to her family. And she had a tremendous amount of family photos and memorabilia. She had so much, in fact, that she had to rent a two-bedroom apartment so that one entire room could store the boxes and boxes of photos. 

Elsie had us meet with her sister and a cousin, and we worked closely with Elsie’s sons. All four of them assured us that everything she was holding onto was a duplicate and that none of her photos and mementos were of any interest to any archives.

But Elsie never believed this. She always held out a fear that she would get rid of something that somebody, somewhere, would need in order to properly document the family history.

We moved her three times over the course of ten years and we emptied her final apartment after she died. So we got to know her quite well. With each move, we tried sorting with her to help her downsize some of the many photos and mementos, but she remained steadfast in holding onto it all.

In fact, she had us digitize a lot of photos – but she refused to discard the paper copies after spending money on digitizing services. And now, years later, all of this sits in a storage unit because her sons cannot bear to go against her wishes and dispose of any of it.

Denise

We helped Denise move to Boston to be near her kids and grandchildren. Like. Elsie, she also had boxes and boxes of photos. She had lost her husband when he was young. He had been a larger than life character, and there were a lot of family stories that revolved around him.

But Denise was much more realistic about her photos. She wanted to keep only a few – enough to fill one small album that she could keep handy and look at without hassle. She had us digitize a couple hundred photos – mostly photos of her kids and grandkids, and the family house that they all loved to visit on Shelter Island. She sent these photos to her kids so they could have fun looking through them.

The rest she tossed right into the trash. She could flip through twenty photos quickly and snatch only one or two to save or digitize. And I could see she was saving only really good photos. If there were fifteen shots from the same birthday party in 1985, she would quickly focus in on the one shot that told a good story.

So now, if Elsie’s kids want to see family photos, they have to look through many memory sticks and wade through all the photos she had digitized. Or visit the storage unit and start opening boxes. Just the thought of trying to sort through it all probably prevents them from even considering it.

Meanwhile, if Denise’s kids want to see family photos, they just pick up the album she keeps near her sofa, and within seconds they are happily seeing the memories that she wanted to preserve for them.

Sorting photos takes time, so you need to commit to the project. Put a two or three hour photo sorting appointment in your calendar. When the time comes, take out a portion of your collection – maybe one album or one small box of loose photos. Now search for good photos. Make it a hunting expedition. Tell yourself you only want to find the best ones. As you search, put just the photos that have meaning in one pile. This is your keep pile.

Put the rest into a big pile which we’ll call purgatory. The purgatory pile is the pile you plan to discard, but I recommend keeping it for another few days before you do so.

At the end of the session, make another appointment to sort again a few days later. At that point, take a quick look at the purgatory pile and then toss it in the trash (or shred the photos, if you are worried about neighbors coming across anything private). Then take out the next box of photos and repeat the whole process: look for the really good photos and save those; discard the rest. It’ll probably take some time but the process can be fun and even moving. Plus, you’ll be so happy when you have an organized photo collection. 

Paperwork and files

Paper just accumulates. I can’t explain it. A lot of it comes into our homes every day in the mail and if we don’t have a system for handling it, it can quickly start to pile up. Suddenly a few pieces of mail have become fifty pieces of mail, then more.

Most of it is not important, but we have to sort through it all to find the things that are. This takes time, of course, and it tends to take a backseat to all the chores that hit us when we get home from work -- getting dinner together, walking the dog, maybe a quick trip to get groceries.

Many of our clients have had massive amounts of paper to deal with. We see a lot of junk mail, which is pretty easy to throw away, but we also see a lot of papers with sensitive information that needs to be shredded. The real issue is that there is usually, deep inside each file cabinet or each pile of paper, something with information that needs to be kept. This means somebody (often our staff) has to sort through all the files and papers to uncover the things that are needed. Then the rest can be shredded or discarded.

Maria

Maria’s brother, Jack, hired us to move her from her Brooklyn apartment to a residence near him in Maryland. The apartment was the same one they had grown up in. Jack left home to join the army when he was a young man, but Maria stayed and lived with her parents until both of them died many years later.

She was a solitary person. She had friends from church, but none of them were close enough to have been invited to her home. When we started working with her, she told us that nobody else had been inside – other than the building super – in twenty years.

She had kept people out because she was embarrassed for anyone to see how much paper she had accumulated. It started with her parents, eighty years earlier.  Her father was evidently a “pack rat” and neither he nor her mother ever managed to come up with a good system for disposing papers they didn’t need. They just kept it all and boxed it up over the years. Maria inherited these papers and well as these habits and eventually the second and third bedrooms became nothing more than storage for papers and files.

Maria was paralyzed by it all and, to be honest, I felt a little paralyzed when I first saw it. It felt like it would not be possible to sort it all, even if we worked for months.

But Sarah on our staff was able to get into a groove with Maria. When Sarah is not assisting our clients she is a yoga instructor. This gives her a calm, soothing presence. By giving Maria time to get used to her and trust her not to throw anything away carelessly, she managed to convince Maria to agree that some papers could be discarded. They made a list together. It started with things like “expired coupons, magazines from more than two years ago, and old grocery lists.” As they worked, Sarah would add to the list (all with Maria’s approval), until finally Sarah was able to throw away roughly ninety percent of the papers she found.  

The longer the list became, the quicker the work progressed. Eventually they worked themselves down to papers that had belonged to Maria’s parents. She had always felt it was disrespectful to toss any of their papers, but Sarah patiently showed her how much of their papers were things exactly like those on Maria’s discard list. Slowly, Maria allowed herself to part with these papers as well.

The best news was that they were able to find a bunch of papers Maria needed. By the end, they had a box of financial documents that Maria would need in her new apartment, and a box with tax records from recent years. They also had more than a few boxes of family memorabilia. It was a little more than we wanted her to keep, but a lot less than she would have kept if we hadn’t sorted so diligently with her.

If you have a lot of papers collected, you are probably beating yourself up for not tackling it. The truth is that sorting papers and files is excruciatingly boring. Don’t be hard on yourself if you’ve let it go. But please keep in mind that if you don’t handle it now, you may find that someone else has to do this chore for you one day.

Start by preparing a list of things you need to keep: tax records going back seven years, documents related to your property if you own it, records of stock purchases, etc. Everyone’s situation is unique, so you should consult with an accountant or financial adviser as you prepare this list.

With this list in hand, commit to sorting your files in 2-3 hour increments and stay focused on the task during that time. Keep anything on your list but try to be committed to discarding the rest.

You should shred anything that includes sensitive information like your social security number, bank account numbers, or health records. There are services that will shred on-site and do not cost that much, relatively. This will give you the freedom to shred a lot at one time.

And if you’re feeling discouraged, remember Maria. It took time and patience, but she managed to turn that

Loss of privacy and control

We are sometimes hired to declutter and organize someone’s home because of a new medical condition that requires changes in how they live. Sometimes, in fact, we are called because someone is in the hospital or rehab and cannot be discharged until they have a safe home to return to.

Some clients will now be using a walker or wheelchair, for example, and will need their home re-configured to allow room to maneuver these tools. Some will need a full-time caregiver, and will need to free up space to accommodate them.

For many of our clients this is an inconvenience or a sad reminder of their loss of independence. But they are eager for it to commence so they can return home and resume their old life as much as possible. However, for our intensely private clients, these changes can be emotionally devastating. These clients have spent years, even decades, making their home a personal sanctum, untouched by anyone else. Suddenly, they are helpless as others descend on the space, making decisions without our client’s input.

I often think of our client Dan as an excellent example of this. Dan rented a small one-bedroom apartment in the East Village. He was in his fifties and had fallen quite ill and spent months in rehab. His doctors were ready to discharge him and he was eager to move back home, but there were a few obstacles. He lived on the fourth floor of a building without an elevator, he was quite a collector, and his apartment was kind of a disaster.

Dan was an intensely private person, and he didn’t want anyone seeing his apartment, not even his landlord. As a result, his apartment had not been painted in thirty years and many things had fallen into a state of disrepair. At one point the floor of the bathroom had started to sink. Instead of having his landlord repair it, Dan bolted a heavy cable to the toilet and then secured the cable into the bathroom wall so that the toilet was essentially suspended from the wall and didn’t add weight to the floor.

Dan had not kept his home clean. It is possible cleaning was never a priority to him, or he may have cleaned more when he was healthy but found it too difficult when his illness progressed. In either case, by the time we were hired the situation had gotten really bad. The few pots and pans he owned were caked with grease and food remnants, his clothes and bedding reeked, and there was a visible layer of dust on every one of the thousands of books he had crammed into his small study.

He had managed to prevent anyone he loved from ever seeing this until, suddenly, he had no choice. He could not come home until the place was deemed suitable for him, and he would need a caregiver to stay with him. Home healthcare agencies will not send caregivers into homes like this because they are not safe or healthy work environments. Dan had appointed his father to be his power of attorney, so his father hired us to clean up his apartment.

As my staff bagged all his clothes to be cleaned and boxed up all his old magazine for discarding, I imagined Dan’s anger and embarrassment at suddenly having his home dismantled, cleaned, and re-assembled by complete strangers.

There is no way to predict when or if any of us will be taken ill. But I am sure, when Dan looks back, he regrets not putting his things in order. If his apartment had been uncluttered and tidy, his family would not have had to get as deeply involved as they did. He is home now. He is furious about some of the things that were discarded, but at least he is home.

If you are a private person like Dan, you may want to put a plan in place for how you want your things handled if you become incapacitated or die. It is not a bad idea to put together instructions in your will. You can even specify a few companies that you would trust to sort your things, and you can specify that your family not be involved. If you don’t do so, the courts will naturally turn to them first.

If you don’t designate someone as your power of attorney (something we should all do as soon as we are adults), then your state will follow a formal process of deciding who this should be. It could be a parent, or a child, for example. If you have other, non-relatives, who you would trust more to understand your wishes, you should designate them legally now.

You might consider putting into writing that your executor or power of attorney hire someone from an organization like the National Association of Senior Move Managers (of which we are a proud member), for example, or the National Association of Professional Organizers. The key is to specify these things now, before it is too late.

Disposing of prescription medications

Excess medication needs to be discarded carefully. If it is thrown out in the garbage, there is always the possibility that drug addicts will find it. If it is flushed down the toilet, the ingredients can get into the water supply and cause public health risks.

The best thing to do with old medication is to try to return it to the pharmacy that sold it to you. Some pharmacies have programs to take drugs back so it’s worth asking about this. Unfortunately, many pharmacies these days have opted out of taking back the medications, meaning it is up to you to dispose of them properly.

The best solution we’ve found for clients’ used medications is to dump the drugs out of their containers into a plastic bag – a garbage bag or even a small storage bag – and fill that bag with something gross. We often dump tomato sauce into it, or used kitty litter, or excess paint from an old can. The key is to make the contents of the bag so disgusting that a desperate drug addict will not take the drugs. Now tie up this bag and drop it into a larger garbage bag with your regular trash.

This may seem pretty extreme lengths to go to just to throw something away, but we’ve always felt it was important to do this properly. The potential repercussions seem too high.

For the bottles and boxes themselves, we recommend either removing the label with your name on it or using a magic marker to cover up your details. Do not dispose of the label in the same bag as the medication itself. The containers can usually be recycled.

It takes a few extra steps but it’s worth it to know you’re disposing of your medication properly.

The gift of giving your things to someone you love

I adored my maternal grandmother, Gladys. She was calm, smart, and thoughtful. She always wore a string of pearls, and I coveted them when I was a little girl. She had told my mom that she wanted me to have them so, after she died, my mom had the pearls re-strung for me. I love this necklace, and I always think of my grandmother when I wear it.

I think it was so kind of my grandmother to remember what I wanted and leave me that. And only that. If she had bequeathed me a lot of other things – furniture, china, etc. – I would have had to go through the guilt-ridden process of letting it all go. Or I would have had to pay to store it. Or I would have had to cram it in all into our Brooklyn apartment. Instead, I have one string of pearls that I love and no possessions which became, frankly, a burden.

My husband’s grandmother, Ruth, did something equally smart. In the last few years of her life, she offered jewelry to people periodically. I admired a clunky silver bracelet of hers, so one day when I came to visit she had bagged it up for me, ready to take home. When I wore it to a family wedding a few months later, she beamed with pride. I wore it to her next few birthdays. And I wore it to her funeral. I continue to wear it to this day.

We are always encouraging clients to make nice gifts before they die. This allows you to make sure you’re giving something your loved ones want. If you offer something to someone and they do not want it, you can select someone else who will really want it. Then you have not made the mistake of bequeathing something to someone who will not appreciate it the way you always did.

Or if there is a hobby that you loved but no longer enjoy, like golfing or sculpting, imagine how great it would be to know that your tools are being used by someone who wants to get into these hobbies but can’t afford the right equipment. Instead of letting your golf clubs gather dust in your basement, give them to a neighbor’s child who is just getting started. And if no one wants your jewelry or golf clubs? Donate them. Let a stranger benefit.

I am not suggesting that you give away things you need, like your bed or coffee cups. Or that you should give away anything you are still using. But if there are things you have always cherished and hope to pass along, like jewelry, you may find comfort by either gifting them now or making sure you have arranged for someone to receive something you know they will love.

And if you do decide to gift them, think about the joy you will feel getting to see your loved ones enjoy your gifts. Why wait until you’re gone to give it to them when you can both find joy in the gift right now?

Old paint cans

After a home renovation project, it can be helpful to save some paint cans in case of chips or wall damage. But, in time, these can really start to add up. They take up space and are a fire hazard. Unfortunately, getting rid of them is not as easy as just taking them out to the curb on garbage day.

In New York City paint cans can be recycled but the rules are tricky. The cans can have some paint in them, but the paint needs to be completely dried out and caked onto the can.

For cans with just a little wet paint inside, open them up and let them dry completely. This may take a couple of days. Once the paint is dry, toss the cans recycling.

For cans with more paint, the job is a little messier. We usually use two garbage bags – one nestled inside the other. This way if one bag rips, the other one is providing back up protection. Fill the inner bag with something absorbent, like paper shredding or cat litter. You can now pour the excess paint directly into this bag. Then seal this bag carefully and toss it out with regular garbage. Please be careful about the fumes and don’t put this garbage bag in your home.

Let the cans dry out and add them to recycling.

Many communities will hold events where you can bring hard-to-dispose of things like old paint cans. In New York, #lowereastsideecologycenter, among others, has community events to take old paints.

An artist’s legacy

We have been hired by many families who are emptying the homes of artists and, I have to tell you, it breaks my heart when a family is faced with a large collection of art created by someone they love.

I’m not talking about super-successful artists with strong sales records or artists represented by galleries. These works should be handled professionally. I’m talking here about people who created art as a hobby, keeping 99% of the pieces they created.

The art is often beautiful. The art is often moving. The problem? There’s a whole lot of it. We’ve had cases where hundreds of pieces are left behind. And the sad truth is that nobody loves a collection like this as much as the artist themselves did. Now the artist is gone but the collection remains.

The best solution we’ve had is to make the art a central part of a memorial service. Make the memorial a tribute to your loved one’s work. And ask everyone who attends a memorial service to select at least one piece of art to take home with them. Honesty helps here. People want to help after a death, so give them a very specific role. You can say something like this:

“Please bring at least one piece home with you. Even if you don’t plan to keep it yourself, please find a good home for it by giving it to someone who will love it or donating it to an organization you know who can make good use of it. You will be helping us out greatly with this act.”

If there is still work after the memorial, you can try donating what remains. We’ve had success with this, but it’s unlikely you’ll find a donation center that wants more than a few pieces from the collection. So, even after donating to several places, it’s likely you’ll still have pieces left. Sadly, at this point disposal may be your only option.

The families of these artists know how painstakingly long the artist spent on each piece. A spouse, child, or good friend of a deceased artist can often remember hearing the deceased talk about each piece as they made it. I always try to remind people to not get caught up in thoughts like “Bob would be mortified if he knew we discarded of some of his art.” Instead, try to remember that creating the art is what gave the artist pleasure and they reaped the benefits of that creative process while they were living. What remains, after their death, is just a physical memento. Sometimes taking digital photos of each piece can make the process less painful.

For the art supplies themselves, in New York City there is a wonderful non-profit called Materials for the Arts (www.materialsforthearts.org). They have a huge warehouse where art teachers in New York City can go for free supplies. They accept paint, fabrics, beads, craft supplies, canvasses, and much more.

If you are an artist yourself reading this, I have a hard truth for you: if you leave behind a lifetime’s worth of art you will be, without realizing it, putting a heavy burden on your family and friends. There are some things you can do to make this easier for them:

1. Start to give your art away now; if anyone has mentioned that they would like a piece of your work, ask them to come pick one out. They can either take it now or you can make a note that they will take it after your death.

2. Have an honest conversation with your spouse, children, or friends. Tell them you don’t expect them to find the perfect home for every piece you made. Tell them it’s okay to dispose of some of it. They will remember these words later and it will make them feel better if they do need to dispose of any of it.

Jewelry

Small, easy to move, and desirable – I have come to think of jewelry as the polar opposite of pianos. More often than not, when we are handling an estate with jewelry, there is someone in the family who wants to keep it. This is, by far, the best outcome for anything we handle. We love to see heirs happily accept gifts from estates.

If there isn’t anyone who wants it, jewelry can often be sold without a lot of effort. Fine jewelry – jewelry made of silver or gold or containing gems – is easy to sell. Even costume and vintage jewelry, which do not have the same inherent value, can be desirable and, therefore, sale-able.

If the jewelry can’t be sold, there are plenty of thrift shops that will happily take it as a donation. Jewelry doesn’t take up much space so shops can accept a lot of it.

Doris

Doris was a wealthy widower who died without heirs or many friends. She had a large collection of jewelry, including a ridiculously large gem that looked like a diamond but was set on a simple, cheap ring. We had a jewelry dealer meet us at the apartment to test it. She weighed it and found it to be 7.5 carats – quite sizable. Then she studied it and measured its density with a small portable device that measures the thermal conductivity of a gem.

The test appeared to show it was a genuine diamond, but as she studied the gem carefully herself, she began to have doubts about the accuracy of the device. The setting concerned her. A large expensive diamond would typically be set on a large and expensive ring. She was also concerned by the fact that the ring was kept in a jewelry box with an assortment of costume jewelry. She could not come to any final conclusions about it herself but advised us to show it to an appraiser.

We brought it to a jewelry appraiser at an auction house. He ran the same kinds of tests as the dealer but he had more equipment and better lighting and he was able to determine, with confidence, that it was real. He made an offer to buy it for $20,000. This was nice but we needed a second opinion before we agreed to a sale.

Next I took the ring to a private jeweler on Madison Avenue located a floor above a boutique clothing shop. There are no signs for the shop. You ring the buzzer just as if you are visiting a friend, and are asked to identify yourself before you are admitted upstairs. Inside, you find yourself in a huge apartment that has been converted into a private store. Jewelry cases line every inch of wall space, and the whole place glitters from the light reflecting off of gems.

The first time I had an appointment, I overheard another client ask if she could buy some “cruise” jewelry. It turns out she was looking for jewelry that was real, and nice, but not as valuable as her regular jewelry, in case it got lost or stolen during her trip. She paid $10,000 for a “cruise” bracelet.

The jeweler studied Doris’ ring carefully. He made a lot of notes and called over a colleague for a second opinion. They were also baffled by the modest setting, but they became convinced that the gem was real. Ultimately they paid Doris’ estate, close to $36,000, almost double what the auction house had offered. The Estate Executor agreed to this sale.

I don’t want readers to get lofty ideas from Doris’ story. Most of our clients have some nice pieces to sell or give away, but the values never come close to this amount. It was a once in a lifetime diamond for us.

The good news is that you have options with jewelry. If you don’t have time, you can store it somewhere safe until you can focus on selling it. Once you’re ready, there are a lot of dealers and auction houses interested in fine jewelry. Always get at least a second opinion before committing to a sale and consider hiring an appraiser if the value of the piece seems to warrant the cost of an appraisal.