Are we all hoarders?

I am currently experiencing what it is like to be the executor of a will. The latest task at hand has been to get the house that I grew up in ready to sell. My wife and I moved seven years ago, so I had some idea what was involved from a Real Estate point of view. That said, I didn’t expect what I found at home this past weekend.

My mother believed in a simple life and because she grew up on the trailing edge of the great depression, she set her expectations very low. The up side of course, is that life always exceeded her expectations, which could account for the ever present smile evident in every surviving photograph.

For a person who lived such a minimalistic existence, she seems to have acquired an amazing amount of stuff. It took two solid days and close to 200 garbage bags to empty a small two bedroom bungalow. There were some treasures in the form of sentimental things that will be passed down the line, but the rest was simply junk.

I can’t imagine what we have in store for our kids. It seems that we expand to fill the space we are given, in much the same way that hard drives are never big enough. I think there is a real opportunity for someone to open a business that archives our data on a regular basis. Scan, store and dispose of old documents and pictures and make recommendations with respect to how we can manage our own junk.

The amazing thing about junk is that it exists in an area of space/time that is invisible most of the time. Major events are required for it to become visible and the longer you stay in one place the more of it there is. Do your kids a favor and through something out.

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