The Best Care Investment I've Made This Year

Hiring an organizer was the self-care I really needed

(Unrealistic) pantry goals.

Stepping foot in our garage had become a triggering daily event for me. I go in there several times a day to access our extra freezer and back stock home and pantry items, and as a walk through to our cars parked in the driveway. It houses all the usual garage things - bikes, camping gear, tools, cans of leftover paint, inflatable pool toys, and other random stuff we use once a year.

It had increasingly also become a dumping ground for piles of outgrown toys and clothes to be donated, boxes of things I kept when my mom moved first to an assisted living, then to a nursing home, some items of my dad’s that I chose to keep after he died earlier this year, and leftover supplies from his memorial… the list goes on. And it was all piled in a growing mound expanding from the center of the garage, completely unorganized. The bigger the mound got, the more daunting the idea of tackling it became.

We collect stuff all our lives -starting with rocks when we are kids- and continue in various ways until we die. Part of that is human nature, but in this age of consumerism, same-day delivery, and cheap plastic everything, we no longer need to be discerning. Evidence of the the American “stuff” problem can be seen in the long list of series that document it: Hoarders, Marie Kondo, the Home Edit, Storage Wars - the list goes on.

Beyond the too-easy consumerism, perhaps collecting and hanging on to material possessions yet another feeble human attempt to hang on to the materiality of life and avoid thinking about the temporality of it all?

But there’s also the nostalgia that our material possessions hold. My husband is a photographer, obsessed with memory, collector of cameras and records and Dodger knick knacks, and he finds nostalgia everywhere. Our two boys have teased him endlessly about the commemorative canister of Dodger dirt that he recently ordered from one of the World Series games. I’m not really a minimalist or super-organized, but I constantly aspire to be more so, and I’m not a collector. So we don’t always see eye-to-eye on what to keep and how to organize it.

Last month, I made an investment that I now believe was the best money we’ve spent in a long time: I hired a home organizer. We had been trying to make time to clean out the garage ourselves for months, never finding the big chunks of time we needed to conquer such a massive task. It would require physical time, without the interruptions of kids or other responsibilities, as well as mental capacity to make decisions about every. little. thing. Including lots of things that were emotionally-charged.

Instead, we preserved our weekends with the kids and paid someone who was undeniably more efficient at the task than we are, and who had no emotional connection to any of our stuff. She came armed with bins and labels and new ideas, and made our garage an organized space that I now find satisfying and useful. Everything now has a dedicated home, neatly labeled on a shelf or hook on the wall. We got rid of carloads of stuff we didn’t need and will not miss. While at first hiring an organizer felt embarrassingly indulgent, I now realize that we would have paid much for a babysitter to hang out with our kids while we worked on it over several weekend days. Win win win.

Lesson one: sometimes the best “self-care” or “help” for the caregiver is not about outsourcing the directly care-related tasks.

Much of my mental load and labor is filled with caregiving tasks. But I didn’t need, want or even know how to outsource those. Ultimately, it is me that has to sign the DSHS forms for my brother, sign my kids up for activities and make sure my mom’s bills are paid. What I really needed last month was for someone else to organize the damn garage.

Like many moms, I have always been the one to finally get in there and purge and semi-organize the kids clothes and toys. In that sense, maybe organizing is something that gets lumped in as a “care task.” Either way, it had built up, and I was tired of it. I didn’t want to spend another weekend day organizing instead of making holiday cookies with my kids. I was over making all of the tiny yet exhausting decisions about what to do with each little thing. I was over being resentful and annoyed about bearing the feelings of responsibility and urgency.

I no longer have that BIG to-do item hanging over my head on a daily basis, and it freed up space in my head for other things. Organizer Michelle has now also organized our office/guest room, and started on our playroom and youngest kids’ room, and I couldn’t be happier about it. This was the care for the caregiver I personally needed.

Lesson two: clutter and too much stuff really does impact mood and mental health.

I have felt much more peaceful and lighter in our house since Michelle worked her wonders. I feel joy looking around at our neatly organized downstairs shelves, rather than stress and chaos and looming “to-dos'“ staring me in the face.

For me, the garage had come to symbolize all the home and care tasks that continued to pile up, inching toward a breaking point. I just couldn’t get it all done fast enough, I couldn’t keep up, and this garage was throwing it in my face every day.

Excess stuff and cluttered environments are objectively stressful. People exposed to a messy and cluttered environment exhibit higher levels of cortisol, which triggers overwhelm. Not surprisingly, women tend to feel more of the resulting stress and anxiety, but not because we are crazy and “sweat the small stuff” - as society would have us all believe - but because of the unrealistic roles and expectations that same society places on women from the time we are born. As caregivers with an already-burdened cognitive load and inoptimal amount of multitasking, disorder and distraction in our environment further deplete our mental resources.

Lesson three: If you don’t deal with or make a plan for all of your stuff, someone else eventually will have to. Neither of you probably like that idea.

Another part of my adverse reaction to clutter and excessive stuff is likely a trauma response to my mother’s lifelong disorganization (internal and external), and my experience having to deal with her stuff when her health declined, the dementia was evident, and she had to leave her home.

Have you seen the videos of adult kids going to their parents’ house for the holidays and cleaning out the fridge, throwing away jars with expiration dates from… years ago? My mom’s fridge had become an extreme version of this while she was still living alone, so jam-packed with jars of who-knows-what from who-knows-when, visibly moldy items, and more food than I have in my household of five. Sadly, I later found much of the rest of her home to look this way.

@alannabarronAnyone else’s mom hoard stuff from 10 years ago? #momsoftiktok #thanksgiving #holiday #refrigerator

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Even before the dementia noticeably set in, my mother collected and held on to things, with no plan for “downsizing” or thoughts about what would have to be done with it when she dies. It was not something we ever talked about, and she was very protective of her stuff and her autonomy.

She refused to make any decisions about parting with any items, big or small, opting to change the subject, put it off or ignore the questions. And she never forgave my uncle for eventually taking on the overwhelming task of cleaning out her home and getting rid of much of her stuff, which to me was the one big act of help she and I received during the crisis that unfolded with her health.

Many Gen Xers and Millennials are - or will soon be - dealing with there parents’ “Boomer junk.” Boomers were raised by parents shaped by the Great Depression, but came into a time of economic prosperity. Getting rid of things - especially things you paid money for - can be painful. And declining executive function makes this harder.

The concept of Swedish Death Cleaning has recently gained more widespread attention, which emphasizes all that I’ve shared above: letting go of stuff that doesn’t serve you, and getting organized will not only bring you peace, but spare your loved ones a lot of stress.

I’m here to say: If you can’t or don’t want to do it yourself, and have the means, hire a professional to do it for you. It might just be the best money you spend all year.

Have you, or would you hire an organizer? Are you worried about dealing with your parents’ lifetime accumulation of junk? Share with us in the comments!