What are you carrying with you?

The Box My Father Never Opened

I was six years old when we moved from Queens to a small town outside Charleston, South Carolina.

My parents had spent their entire lives in New York City. Everything we owned was packed into cardboard boxes and loaded onto a truck heading south. My mother asked us to draw lines on the tape so we would know if someone tampered with the boxes. When we arrived at our new house, there was an unused recreation room in the very back of the house where most of the boxes went. Slowly, over months and then years, my parents found what they needed to build their new life in South Carolina. But many stayed sealed.

As we grew up, that back room was always a mess. There were stacks and stacks of unopened boxes that created a fun playground for two mischievous little girls who went to play Hide and Seek and King of the Hill among those boxes.

A few years later, we moved again; this time to a nearby small town with better schools. The mountain of boxes moved with us. This time, they went into the garage. My dad lovingly bought and assembled metal shelves to hold the boxes. I remember the walls lined with them, with dust settling on top. This time, we stayed for 10 years in that house, and many of the boxes remained unopened.

We are what we carry along

When I was seventeen, the naval shipyard where my dad worked was closing, so he was reassigned to another town. This time in Georgia. My mom stayed behind with me so I could finish high school, and I helped prep boxes for the move. One afternoon I noticed a box still sealed with the same moving tags from more than a decade earlier.

I was curious. What could possibly be so important that it survived multiple moves but was never needed?

When my dad came home for the weekend, I suggested we throw it away. If he had not needed it in over a dozen, surely he did not need it now.

He hesitated. What if it were something valuable? So he took a box cutter and opened it. Inside were coils of old telephone wire and equipment, all surplus from when he had worked for the phone company in New York. He had not thought about it in years, and he had never opened the box.

Yet after we looked at it, he carefully taped it shut again and brought it with him to his next home in Georgia.

Clutter is often just delayed decision-making.

When my father passed away fourteen years ago, that same box was still there, but this time their Georgia home. And this time, we discarded the contents that we could not give away. I ended up donating two dozen hats he had collected, at least thirty pairs of barely worn shoes, and all of the trophies from my high school days that I had begged him not to move to Georgia after I graduated.

It is strange how our belongings travel with us. They move from city to city, from house to house. Sometimes they outlast the seasons of our lives that created them.

Coming full circle

Recently, I have been sorting through our own boxes. We moved last year, but we only took our furniture and three loads of laundry with us. And over weeks and then months, we carefully and gradually only went back to take the things we needed. We kept everything else in the garage as we rented out our home on Airbnb. We decided this year to move it to a long-term rental, so the day finally came when we had to move everything out of the garage.

It has been surprisingly painful. We have all of the things I have avoided sorting through sitting on my patio waiting on me to make the hard decisions. Most of what we own is evidence of a life we are no longer living or had inherited from both my parents and in-laws.

I also found a decorative shell plaque that used to hang in my parents’ bedroom. They bought it on a trip from Asia before they had kids, and now I am not sure what to do with it. I am debating finding a home for it, but I don’t want it to be in a bin forty years from now waiting for my kids to make a decision I couldn’t.

What do we keep? What do we let go of? That is the question.

When my mother-in-law passed away, it happened so quickly. One day she was fine. Within two weeks, she was gone.

Her laundry was still in the washer. Dishes were still in the sink. It was as if her life had paused mid-sentence. The house simply waited for her to return. We packed up her dresses. Her shoes that she had worn only once or twice. The quiet evidence of a life that had been moving forward right until it stopped.

Standing in the middle of all this stuff, I keep asking myself the same question.

How much do we really need?

How to edit your things and your life

Decluttering is not just about cleaning out a garage. It is about changing how we live.

1. Dedupe
Start by gathering like with like. When we moved, I discovered at least a dozen pairs of scissors scattered throughout the house. I put them all in one place. Standing there looking at the pile, I realized something simple. A household does not need this many scissors.

We often buy duplicates because we cannot find what we already have. The first step to decluttering is sometimes just taking inventory and figuring out what you have.

2. Add, don’t subtract
Decluttering can feel overwhelming because we assume we have to go through everything we own and decide what to remove. That is exhausting. Every object becomes a decision, and every decision carries emotion.

There is an easier way. Instead of starting with subtraction, start with addition.

Find a separate space. It could be a closet, drawer, or shelf. Then begin choosing only the things you truly love and actually use. The items you reach for get put into circulation, and everything else is discarded or donated at the end of 90 days. Clarity often comes not from forcing ourselves to let go, but from intentionally choosing what to keep.

3. Be intentional
Every object takes up more than physical space. It occupies mental space. Before keeping something, ask whether it serves the life you are living today. Not the life you once had. Not the life you imagine you might have someday.

I gave up my ravioli trays because I realized that, as cool as that dream was, I was never going to make ravioli at home. And that’s okay. I gave up my painting supplies and canvases in the same way. Accept that you are changing and your needs are too.

4. Force hard decisions
What I found is that everyone has the “room that shall not be named” where things accumulate, hidden from view. Mine was in our garage, and moving forced it out into the open. Once we had to face sorting through 100 boxes of randomly packed things, we found things we never imagined we even had. There were three crates of brand new baby clothes much of which we passed on to new mothers in need in the neighborhood. I found appliances that were never used (soymilk maker, I am looking at you) and decorative trays and mismatched silverware that just took up space. I found the candle from my husband’s fourth birthday and the baby hats our kids came home with from the hospital. We had just pushed these off to the future us, and now we are facing that decision headon.

5. Keep the memory, not always the object
I have memories from my parents of things they loved, trips they took, and events they attended. But I don’t have space or home for half sets of silverware and platters from long ago. I decided to scan every photo and video tape we had, keeping things that no longer served. Then we sent the items to new homes where they could be loved.

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Our parents grew up in a world of scarcity. They saved everything. Our generation lives in a world of abundance. We are surrounded by disposable clothing, online purchases, and abundant possessions.

Our children will inherit not only what we build, but also what we accumulate. We keep objects because they mean something to us, but sometimes they also weigh us down.

Letting go is not disrespect, but rather making space.

Before you go to bed tonight, open one drawer. Choose three things you no longer need. Let them go. Then move forward without the box you never opened.