Cleaning out

When someone in your household dies, there's huge hole in your life. But what is still there - is all the stuff. The clothes, the car, the broken toaster that he saved for God knows what reason. And in the end, the house we shared together is now my house and needs to start to reflect me and not we.

Well in all the years we lived together, the house was still Karl's house – far more his domain than mine. I never liked the house or the furniture or even the way the kitchen was arranged. And well, to be honest, neither one of use was a great housekeeper. The house needed repairs, painting and a general getting rid of junk and cleaning.

Since he had been retired for more than 20 years (and I was not), it was especially Karl's house; he spent far more time there than I did. The master bedroom closet was his closet, the master bath was his bath. He thought walls should be white (well dingy white) and his furniture could be described as early yard sale. He had been a Navy brat and then a Naval officer. When he retired, he never intended to move again and, by damn, none of the furniture was ever going to be moved again either.

Now with him gone, it was time to clean out and reclaim the space as mine. But Karl was such a pack rat, he still had clothes in his closet from high school (and he was 72 when he died) and where to start was the question.

Plus in a quirk of fate, while I inherited a life estate in the house, I didn't inherit his household goods, so they weren't mine to do with as I pleased. Well everyone at least agreed that no one wanted his clothes. Of course his son and daughter and executor of the estate didn't want to do the work of getting rid of them either. But it seemed like the easiest place to start. So I took a huge dose of allergy pills and Marty and I waded into the closet, filling bag after bag after bag with clothes that we eventually donated to charity. Karl's cousin was his best friend and it wasn't any easier for her than for me, so it took weeks to get the dressers and the closet cleaned out.

Then I had a messy bedroom full of bags of old clothes, but an empty closet and two empty dressers. It was a start. We painted the closet before I started to put my stuff in it. There's something renewing about painting. It's a fresh start and I needed a fresh start. Well the closet was painted and my stuff moved into it. One thing down, 5 million to go.

Next the clothes had to go to make room to clean up the bedroom. It took some weeks to get up the energy, but eventually the clothes were gone.

Each tiny step was a lightening for me; I felt weighed down with all this stuff I didn't want, didn't need and didn't yet have the right to get rid of.

The cleaning, painting and rearranging continued. With each room cleaned out, I felt lighter. I painted the bedroom and, gasp, moved the furniture. I got rid of the carpet and my allergies got immensely better. I painted the living room, put the furniture in the garage (still didn't have permission to get rid of it even though no one wanted that furniture) and when my part of the estate was settled, I bought new living room furniture. The walls were now pink instead of white, the furniture was comfortable and pretty and I had a great place to display art glass pieces. The living room was now mine. It felt good.

I rearranged the kitchen cupboards and threw out all the old canned goods that Karl would never get rid of (there was stuff expired in 1986 in the back!). Oh yes, Karl was a child of the Depression all right. I got rid of the brown dishes and bought individual dishes I liked in all kinds of bright colors. Karl would have never understood a mismatched set of dishes, they were supposed to come in a set. But I love my cheery dishes and the few times I've had company over for dinner, everyone else seems to get a kick out of them too.

There's still a lot of work to go and I still have a lot of junk I don't want. But I'm making progress in cleaning out the old and creating a new home. It's all part of going on.