Don't be a clutter curator

When Robert and I married in 1996, I had a houseful of clutter and he had a houseful of clutter. We put our clutter together and then went to estate auctions to buy more. You could not walk in our home. In January 1999 I began my quest to get organized.

You can't organize clutter, you can only get rid of it. I began to make daily donations to our local Humane Society Thrift Shop. Our clutter slowly went away. We still love to go to estate auctions, but we only buy what we can't live without, and we have to decide where the item is going and what we are getting rid of when we get it home. We don't go very often anymore. We love everything we have, and it is hard to decide what to declutter if we buy something new.

It is so nice to live in a small town. The other day I was at an open house for one of our fastest growing banks in North Carolina, Mountain First Bank. At this open house I ran into our old friend who is the auctioneer at our favorite auction. Jack Eubanks wanted to know why we had not been to one of his auctions lately. I told him that we had everything we needed, and if we brought something new home we had to get rid of something old. He said that his wife, Robin, had the same philosophy. Their home was just the way the had always wanted it.

Eventually we will all be faced with a big decision when it comes to dealing with our parents' belongings. My mother died in 2000. Our home was just the way we liked it, and I didn't want to merge mother's clutter and re-create the CHAOS we had lived in. I was really scared of cluttering up our home again. I called Jack to see if there were items that would be worth putting into one of his auctions. He told us what would sell and what needed to be donated. Not everything our parents own is worth money. If it doesn't have sentimental value to you, then holding onto it is nothing more than hoarding. We have to let it go to save ourselves.

Our parents and their parents are products of the Great Depression. As a result they have held onto most everything. Their garages, storage sheds, basements and most every room in their homes have collections of junk, good clutter and more stuff. Many times we have no clue what is there. These things were items that they thought would be worth something someday or at least they would not have to repurchase them when something broke. You know the mentality — I might need it someday.