Stuff and Story

We hired a company to empty my mom’s apartment. She had died a couple of months earlier and my step father was in Florida, my sister and I were in California and it was the height of COVID. The neighbors called my step father and he called me: “They say you are emptying the apartment into the dumpster.” 

So painful. So many unorganized memories. Ultimately,  a lot of STUFF.

Let’s be honest:
Most of us are living with way more stuff than we can name, remember, or explain. Closets packed with “someday,” garages stacked with “I’ll get to it,” attics full of boxes we haven’t cracked open since Clinton was in office. Our belongings don’t just fill space—they hold memories, unresolved stories, emotional knots, identity fragments, grief, pride, guilt, and a few mysteries even we can’t decode anymore.

And here’s the part we don’t like to say aloud:
Someone else is going to have to deal with all of it.
Every drawer.
Every box.
Every forgotten pile.

Not someday—on one of the hardest days of their life.

Your kids know it.
Your partner knows it.

My latest offering Stuff & Story asks:

• What do your belongings mean?

• What story do they tell about your life?

• What deserves to be passed down?

• What deserves to be released?

• What do you want your family to know, feel, or understand when they open that drawer or lift that lid?

It’s legacy work disguised as sorting.
It’s emotional clarity disguised as logistics.
It’s preparing your loved ones for the day they’ll need to step into your physical world without you in it.

Your STUFF is not the problem. SILENCE is.

People think dealing with their stuff is boring or grim.
In truth, it’s freeing, intimate, and deeply human.
And it’s one of the greatest kindnesses you can offer the people who will one day have to navigate your absence.

Start now. Choose one item to share with your beloveds over the holidays. Tell its story. Pass it on now.