Cleaning Out the Attic

“Life truly begins after you have your house in order,” Marie Kondo says.

Right now, my mom is trying to put our home in order, the century-old brick house that my family has lived in for nearly forty years.

She’s starting with the attic.

“In another ten years, I might be too old to do this,” she reckons.

The attic contains the debris of her child-raising years, such as a diaper pail and a wooden potty chair. My brother Andrew, the youngest, will turn thirty-five soon. Frugal Mennonites will save anything.

To help out, I borrowed some books from the library (buying books to help declutter would be counterproductive), including the famous “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo, the bestseller written about ten years ago by a Japanese cleaning consultant.

Kondo recommends collecting all the items in certain categories (books, clothing, paper, etc) and spreading everything out on the floor or on a table, then only putting back what you need. While that might work in an apartment in Toyoko, it’s not a plan for a house like ours. Mom works at cleaning out the attic during the day, as she has time, and I help carry things down the two flights of stairs in the evening. Dad gets the job of stashing trash in the barn for pickup day.

Last week, I had a lunch with a sales rep who’s older than me. I asked Ann Marie if she has any advice for cleaning out an attic.

“Get a roll of big garbage bags and stuff everything inside the bags, fast. Don’t look at anything,” Ann Marie said. She helped her parents clean out a basement and two attics, all stuffed to capacity.

Our attic still had room to walk. But I’m amazed at what has been stored above our heads for many years.

Perhaps the oldest item in the attic is a cast-iron claw-foot bathtub, which may be as old as the house itself. It was in the attic when my parents bought the house, and it would take a football team or sledge hammer to remove it.

Most items are much newer. “Do you really want that foot spa thing?” Mom asked. Um, no. The foot spa thing was a poor yard sale choice. It went to the barn, along with a rusty ice cream maker and a Crockpot with a worn-out cord.

We brought down boxes of old school papers and sorted them on the deck on a warm evening. It was like a Penn Johns School time capsule. I found an old backpack of mine filled with workbooks, which I apparently stashed in the attic at the end of the school year. That went into a trash bag.

Mom selected the best drawings and writings and put them in a plastic tote to keep the silverfish out. She’s also saving the 1993 Sears catalog, the last time it was printed.

Some items, like children’s clothing patterns still in the package, went to the thrift store. My brothers are claiming some old Car & Driver magazines and suit coats. My sister even took the potty, she plans to use it as a flower planter. Frugal Mennonites will use anything.

The strangest find was my brother’s cast from when he broke his wrist in eighth grade. I sent Ken a picture and asked if he wanted it. “Yuk, not really. Thanks for the picture though!”

One of largest items was a crib that Mom had slept in as a baby nearly seventy years ago, then used for her own babies. My aunt borrowed it for some of her children, and one of her sons (who’s now a doctor) jumped on it and broke it, and somehow it went up in our attic. Despite the rich family history, the crib was falling apart and the mattress was nasty, so out to the trash it went.

Once Mom has cleaned the attic, she plans to move down through the house, tidying closets and cabinets. I’m decluttering some of my stuff too. If we find enough resalable goodies, we might have a yard sale this summer.

Some things will stay in the attic, such as the rocking horse that Dad made and Mom painted. What’s an attic without a rocking horse? We’ll keep storing seasonal items like air conditioners and blankets, and large items like wrapping paper and a roll of quilt batting.

And of course, that claw-foot bathtub.