Decluttering — it ain’t for sissies

We thank Steve Hansen for contributing this post to our blog today!

Today I finally made the momentous decision to get rid of my collection of college textbooks and post-college engineering and technical books, which I had carefully maintained for about the past 50 years. This came about after I had recently been involved in helping our good friend, a Conejo Valley Village member, sort and box up her late husband’s similar collection of beloved college engineering textbooks and computer manuals, this following his rather sudden and unexpected demise last winter.

Ever since then I had been saying to myself, “I’m 80 plus years old. I have stage 4 prostate cancer. I am an above knee amputee with macular degeneration. I can’t walk very well, can’t see and can’t drive anymore. My younger brother already died and he was healthier than me. Obviously I need to think about getting rid of stuff I’m never going to use again. That’s what a rational person would do.” Of course it is very hard to be fully rational when making an irrevocable decision to get rid of things that symbolize and reflect the personal and professional accomplishments of my younger self that is now forever lost and can never return again. It’s the forever part that gets to me and I’m sure many of my readers. But I decided to bite the bullet today and just pack my four 10 ream boxes of books that I had so carefully sorted and cataloged several years prior and load them into the car.

Needless to say that task was quite a challenge for me. I knew I could not even open any of the boxes, because I would certainly find many very treasured items that I would be unable to finally part with, so I made the conscious decision to just load entire boxes from my den closet into the car, in toto. First problem was my wife is not very good at backing up the car, especially into a garage, so she immediately ran into and knocked over one of our curbside trash bins before finally getting the car into the garage in a catty cornered manner exactly opposite to where I was pointing at her to do.

Meanwhile I had managed to lift one of the boxes from the closet floor into a task chair with casters so I could roll it along the floor to our hallway garage entry door. From there I managed to wrestle the box onto the garage floor and scooted it up near the car’s rear deck. Applying some Herculean effort, I managed to lift it up into the car from my knees. Meanwhile, my wife heard me cursing and struggling to lift just a simple box full of books and advised me that it would perhaps be best and safest if she simply carried individual books into empty boxes in the car, while I rested up and recovered from my near fall from my knees to the ground. All this time, I’m saying as many 4 letter words as I know in the hopes something would make this erstwhile simple task doable for someone as decrepit as me.

Anyway, my wife and I finally got the car packed up and headed over to the Thousand Oaks Brimhall Library. Since it was my project that I had already pre-arranged with the library staff, and rather than have my wife do everything for me (again!), I hobbled over to the front desk, spoke with a staff member who immediately summoned a library aide with a book cart. We went out to the car together. The young lady, of very slight build, loaded the four boxes onto the cart in almost no time and off she went. No swearing, no falling, no struggling whatsoever. Meanwhile I’m thinking to myself, “I used to be like that! What the hell happened!”

As I reflect a little more, I realize that a good part of the problem may be my UCLA physician who is treating me for prostate cancer with meds that impair my strength and endurance at the expense of putting the cancer in a quiet, inactive state. Because I respect him so much, I feel compelled to do what he says. He is a brilliant, dedicated young man barely in his thirties. I know just how disappointed he would be if I should die of prostate cancer, so I’m doing my best to make sure I die of something besides prostate cancer. Meanwhile my wife doesnt want me to die of anything at all, leaving me stuck in this checkout line, credit card in hand, awkwardly waiting and wondering what will transpire next in this great continuum of life, death and all that lies beyond.

 

21 thoughts on “Decluttering — it ain’t for sissies”

  1. Jo, if you are still listening —
    The authors of this site are asking me to come up with more stuff. They think I know how to write material that can generate traffic which I kinda know how to do. But you are obviously much closer to being a professional writer and blogger than I ever could be. Is there anything you, being a woman, might want to see written from a ‘male perspective’ that might be of interest to the target audience for this site? This could obviously lead in lots of directions, possibly many of them yet to be explored. Or even outright crazy. If anything piques your interest, feel free to contact me. email shansen1@pacbell.net or phone (818) 889-2783.
    Otherwise I’ll just try to ‘wing it’ on my own. Until next time–
    Best, Steve

    1. Hmmm.. Funny you should ask! Besides all my own personal stuff I still have a rather large collection of both my parents’ and my grandparents’ personal treasures. Evidently, ‘Cant Get Rid of It’ (CGRI) must be a genetic disorder that runs in my family.

  5. What a great article, Steve. Since I know you, I can just imagine what a chore this was, for you.
    I found your words very inspiring. When we’re sitting in the living room, watching TV, I look at all the THINGS I have , momentos from all our travels, and lots of collections, and clutter, on every shelf. I think to myself, someday, everything will need to be packed up, and sent somewhere, but I don’t have a clue, as to where. Or when. (Most likely, when one of us dies, and the other one moves to assisted living.) I’m hoping Gentle Transitions will still be around to help!)

  6. Good for you, Steve. Your relatives will be grateful that they don’t have to do the heavy lifting. Yes, this is the time of life when we left go of our accumulated possessions. Sometimes to a good cause, sometimes just to the trash.

    I live on Bainbridge Island where we just held our annual Rotary Auction — the biggest yard sale in the country. Hundreds of volunteers help for a whole week with the preparation while people drop off all the stuff they no longer need and volunteers sort it into categories, so people can find what they want when it goes on sale. The big sale was on Saturday July 2. I don’t know how much money they made, but probably similar to previous years — in the real of $600,000.

  7. Steve was wise to contact his library ahead of time! Many libraries do not want our old text books. On the subject of libraries, I just finished a Susan Orlean book called the Library Book. It was tremendous!

    Board member, Chico Friends of the Library

  8. I so relate to this! I’ve still got college books and so many other books that I’ve been reluctant to let go of….. But this stage of life is all about letting go. Easier said than done. With books, with everything we get attached to, with life itself. I wish you well.

    1. I just read your blog (in ‘blitz mode’ to try to understand the big picture before bedtime). You are an amazing writer! You’ve expressed your deepest thoughts and feelings about ‘existence’ about ‘aging’ in such a sensitive and heartfelt way, that I am compelled to go back and read and study the whole thing, word by word, slowly. Thanks for being such an inspiration!

        1. Hi Jo
          You’ve inspired me so much I just bought a cheapo web domain sch404.com (as in ‘Stephen C Hansen not found’) and made a gravatar. Perhaps we will contact again sometime. That would be my hope anyway..

          1. Congratulations on buying a website! Yes, I hope to connect again too! Good luck and have fun with your website! Let’s see if I can figure out how to follow you….I speak just enough of this technology language to get by and sometimes get into trouble, but it is not my native tongue!!

            1. Well all I bought so far is the domain. I still have to build and host the site. I’ve built several web sites in past years mostly WordPress, but have forgotten how I did them. The cool thing about old age is that everything I do now becomes a new learning experience!

              1. Lol. I so understand! If I wait a bit, every book that I’ve read becomes a new book! And the waiting period is getting shorter and shorter….

                    1. I’ve edited/updated my gravatar profile so that it speaks to who I really am and how I’d like to be remembered.. Best, Steve

                    2. Jo
                      I just got this email from the authors of We are Proud Aging Women blog

                      Your post has received hundreds of hits!!
                      From: Linda Bergthold xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx
                      To: xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx
                      Cc: xxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx; xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
                      Date: Wednesday, July 6, 2022 at 05:46 PM PDT
                      Stephen, I think your post has received more hits than almost any we have done!! Congrats! There are views from China, Canada too!!

                      Linda Bergthold

Comments are closed.