Posted on April 19th, 2022

Lizbeth Meredith never considered herself a hoarder. Perish the thought this minute.

But with the arrival of the coronavirus last year, Ms. Meredith, a fledgling podcaster who was about to retire from her job as a probation supervisor, began working from home, a three-bedroom townhouse in Anchorage, Alaska.

“I needed a space for my computer that would also work as a recording studio, a place where I could get things done and not have distractions,” said Ms. Meredith, 57, who, finally settled on a large closet. But then she took a look inside: “Wow. It was amazing what I had stacked up.”

There, in the tottering piles, she found, among other things, a love letter from the first boy she kissed in junior high, lots of cute childhood photos of her two daughters, now in their 30s, but also many, many copies of the same cute photos. She excavated her daughters’ elementary school report cards — and also her own elementary school report cards.

“No one is going to ask me how I did in second grade,” Ms. Meredith said. “I had all these things I didn’t need.”

Those ancient science and social studies evaluations are now history, along with lots of clothing, toys, pieces of art, fancy silverware, kitchen chairs, portable grills, a bafflingly large number of hot dog skewers — Ms. Meredith doesn’t even like hot dogs — and several ottomans. “I don’t need to put my feet up every time I sit down,” she said.

Covid sent the nation into lockdown. Stuck within their own four walls, people began pondering such existential questions as “Why do I have seven Pyrex loaf pans?” and “What are the odds that I’ll ever get into those size 2 jeans again?” Like Ms. Meredith, they frequently found relief, if not necessarily answers, in a Swedish death cleanse, perhaps more to the point, in a bored-to-death cleanse.

But for many, decluttering was a practical necessity. Suddenly, home was no longer simply haven and shelter. It was also an office (sometimes multiple offices), a school, perhaps even a gym, requiring extra equipment and furniture — requiring a rethinking and reapportioning of space. To accommodate those changes something had to give, and a lot had to go.

Jodi R.R. Smith’s snug three-bedroom colonial in Boston was not really designed to hold two remote-learning college students and two working-from-home parents. But that was the situation her family faced last year when the pandemic hit.

Original article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/realestate/pandemic-decluttering.html

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