Modern Malady

“You don’t have to clean our room,” I said to Millie, the cleaning lady who comes once a week to our son’s house where we are living now. “Howard has his papers spread out all over the place and he said to skip it this week,” I explained.

We had come in for a quick bite of lunch and saw she had arrived. “We’re hoarders,” Howard joked, “you have to walk through a path.”

“No, you’re not hoarders,” she assured us with an intent look. “I’ve cleaned for hoarders, and it is quite an experience.” She said that in one house, she doesn’t have to dust, because she can’t find the surfaces of anything, due to things piled high on them.

Getting into her subject, she exclaimed, “I had to clean out a house where we loaded nine dumpsters full of stuff! They finally had us quit because it was becoming too expensive and just auctioned off what was left.”

We move too much to be actual hoarders, but even so, we can fill up a house pretty fast. There is always a tempting garage sale or estate sale with something too great (or cheap) to pass up. However, I think this a widespread affliction of our times, born of ample production, affluence, and the desire for whatever is new on the market. Add to that the tendency of the older generation, who may have grown up in deprivation, to hang on to things, and the problem is intensified. A thriving industry of storage facilities has sprung up all around the country just to hold our excesses.

“I sometimes wish when we die we wouldn’t leave anything for people to dispose of,” I told my husband the other day. After all, what we treasure and hang on to, the next generation may not value at all (except for money!). Their houses are running over, too, unless they are the exception.

I’m afraid my tendency to over-decorate my home has spawned a few minimalists in my family, however. A couple of my kids want very little, if anything on their walls, and accessories are scarce or non-existent, beyond necessities. Now that our children are well-established, it makes gift-giving a challenge. They don’t need anything, and how do I know what they want? I agree with one son who said “Give things that can be used up,” especially when it comes to the little ones. He suggested drawing paper, crayons, color books and the like. (Their toys are taking over the house, too!)

There is one thing that is certain, when we go we will leave it all behind. As one saying goes, “I’ve never seen a U-Haul following a hearse.” Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:19-21, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven…for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”