“When I Die, It’s All Yours!”

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I don’t know why I said it but I assume it has been on my mind and every year the voice inside me got louder. “I need to fix this!”

But it would be a fight that wasn’t worth fighting because, in the end, I would give in -again. My husband, the wonderful, stubborn man by my side, cannot stop bringing STUFF home. “They just left it behind, it’s almost brand new!” How often have I heard the same sentence and he is correct. Companies and their employees are moving every day and even when it’s within the same building, just up and down the ladder, they don’t take everything with them.

Businesses have a budget and they don’t want to lose it so they often spend money on things that don’t really need to be replaced. That is at least the theory I have or employees simply don’t care because the items, furniture, electronics, and office supplies don’t belong to them. It’s not their money that gets wasted.

Being wasteful. That’s something my husband can’t stand. Last week before our annual community garage sale, he brought a monster chair home. That’s where my problem starts. I know how he thinks and I know what he feels. How could we not be interested in a genuine leather executive office chair? Fifteen years ago I would have danced in the driveway. Back then we had nothing, had been forced to restart our life, and now? Now we have a house full of STUFF we don’t need.

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For weeks I had been downsizing again but how do you reduce things you never wanted to begin with.

Resale shops. According to him, I banned him from going there, which is almost true. At our age you don’t bring old things home to recycle them, you do the opposite. You get rid of things. Less to clean, less to move, less to give away one day.

Over the years, the back of our garage had become a disaster area and I was partly to blame. “Where do you want me to put it?”

“Just bring it in the back of the garage.” The area behind my storage space. Out of sight, out of mind. Which works fine, until you look for something. In January, miraculously three almost new whiteboards showed up. The expensive kind you find in conference rooms. That’s also where the monster chair came from. “It belonged to one of the CEOs.” (Great! So what?)

Last year around Halloween, when I was looking for something, I decided to clean this area up. We both had surgeries scheduled at the beginning of 2025. What if something would happen to one of us?

“If one of us dies, the other will be stuck with everything.” My husband didn’t get it right away. He doesn’t like it when I talk about the future when one of us will leave the other one. I don’t blame him. I don’t like this kind of talk either but seriously, how could I not think of it. We are in our 60s, he more than me, and we are not as invincible as we pretend to be. My knight-and-shinning armor had four surgeries in the last six years.

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“If the universe is fair I will die before you and you will have to downsize and declutter the garage and the attic rooms all alone. Instead of grieving you will spend your time sorting everything we own.” I played the marriage-drama card and it worked instantly.

Now his eyes got big but he didn’t say anything. That’s how his brain works. He takes stuff in, thinks about it for a few days, and then spits out the result of his thinking, like a math computer.

“You are right. One of us will be stuck with everything. It’s time to downsize.” Wowzer! It had worked. I was so proud of myself.

After decluttering a bit and reorganizing everything in our home alone last year, I now had my companion by my side.

Do you know what sucks about garage sales? They are hard work. I had rented tables. We had packed boxes full of all the wonderful treasures that had been hiding in the garage. LED lamps, printers -brand new, DVD players (there is a reason why they have been left behind, nobody watches DVDs anymore). Twenty-five moving boxes full of THINGS.

All through the house, we were hit with memories. “Remember when I brought this home?” Back then in Memphis, in 2010, when we lived with our dogs in an empty house. When we had nothing.

Anxiety hit me hard. According to a doctor, I developed PTSD when we were on the brink of being homeless and sometimes these old familiar feelings come back and swallow all logical thinking. I have never fought in a war. The battle was us staying afloat when we were drowning. Fighting to be a member of society again, after losing it all. Will this ever leave me? The fear, the panic, the terrifying thought of being forced to give our dogs up. All of it. It will never completely leave me. It will stay with me to the end of my time, always waiting somewhere inside of me to come out and take over.

Why do we have so much artwork? So many pictures and frames? Because we had too many empty walls.

Why do we have chairs in the back of my workroom that I will never work on, nor will we ever use them? Because in 2010 we had only one chair and an air mattress. That’s why.

The monster chair. How dare he bring it home? A thousand dollar leather chair, abandoned, house and homeless. How could he not?

I love our marriage. We are strong together. He took three days off. Thursday for sorting and pricing, Friday and Saturday for selling. Sunday for clean up. Oh what a mess this was. My cutting surface was full of things we would try to sell.

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Bittersweet moments of recollection. Part of our story, our history, memories, laughter, and tears, all put on a 10-foot table. Sheet sets that don’t fit our mattresses anymore. Why do I hang on to them?

We unpacked, priced, and remembered. “You need to finish LOOSING IT ALL,” my husband said and I agreed with him. The first part of the wanna-be-book, the piece about losing and hurting, is written and waiting to be edited. The second part, afterward, the new start – the re-start – is in my head and in my memory. The garage sale weekend has brought so much back to the surface. I have been writing nonstop for the last few days. Have ignored my blog, and have ignored real life. Diving into the past is not that easy.

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At 6 am in the morning on Friday we started setting up the tables. It’s all about presentation. It’s a bit like displaying your life if you think about it.

“Come back tomorrow,” we told everybody, “There is more,” and we weren’t kidding. At least 10 boxes were still in the garage.

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We met nice people. “Can I take a picture of this bear?” a guy asked and he sounded so excited. He took a photo and left. “We could have given him the bear,” my kindhearted hubby mumbled. “He is a reseller, he is around the corner looking up the Aviator bear. He will be back.” I know how people glance at things they can’t afford, he didn’t have the look in his eyes. He didn’t count the money in his pocket and went back and forth debating inside if he could afford any kind of luxury. I know the look in people’s eyes. I know how poverty behaves. I have lived it myself. The guy came back and bought the bear, his wallet showed too many bills.

We met a lot of people that weekend. “Nothing goes back into the house or the garage, please, ok?” There was a bit of resistance, he hesitated. “We donate it to the resale shop?”

Yes, that’s what we did with most of the things we didn’t sell. The monster chair is still with us. Somehow it’s now in my sewing room. I am not sure how it happened. How did he talk me into it? Goodness, I can’t resist him -ever.

We kept a few boxes, now neatly stuck up in the garage. “Let’s have another garage sale in the fall.” I could not believe what he had just said. “I go through my tools and you go through all the decorations?” I nodded. Sounds good!

It was a bittersweet weekend. The preparation and the aftermath have kept us busy.

When I die, now less is yours to deal with 🙂

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