Gifting for Christmas doesn’t have to be about adding another sweater to the drawer, another pot to the kitchen cupboard, another ornament for the mantle. Au contraire! Lots of gifts can be totally clutter free. For the senior in your world, perhaps a subscription to the daily paper that fixed income may have forced them to cancel, denying themselves something they enjoyed. Another great gift for senior pet parents is a case of tinned food for their dog or cat, or a bag of kibble. Confirm their preferred brands.
My dinner and a movie pal and I exchange uncluttering gifts; she, by providing me transportation to the city as required to accommodate various errands and I, by gifting her with baked and/or cooked goods - breads, cake slices, muffins, soups, left overs from shared meals. She reports that a single take-away provides her with two meals. Unlike me, she doesn’t have the appetite of 3 men and a boy.
Uncluttering gifts, especially at holiday times such as Christmas, go a long way to enhancing the health and wellness of the shut-in or otherwise isolated. Bringing a meal to share is a gift that reaps many benefits for both the giver and the recipient with residual effects felt by the recipient lingering long after the dessert is gone. That emotional connection, if only for a brief period, is one gift that has no price tag. It should be remembered that gifting in this way isn’t confined to the holiday season. It’s something that people can do with and for each other throughout the year.
Another uncluttering gift is that of helping a person actually declutter his spaces. Very often, those with physical limitations due to life long disability or folks in physical decline as a consequence of advancing age or illness, or who are experiencing depression, whether mild or full-blown clinical depression, which may send them to bed for days at a time, may not be able to keep up with maintaining living spaces the way they used to or the way they’d like to. Key here is not to bulldoze your way into their personal spaces; boundaries must be respected. Gently suggesting to your friend or family member that you are free to ‘help’ them dispose of 6 months worth of newspapers on the living room sofa is a start. Baby steps. Just keep taking the baby steps until the two of you are walking through the spaces with a growing confidence in letting go of ‘stuff’.
A few months ago, I spent hours cleaning spaces that I find particularly awkward and a tax on my energy. I finally bit the bullet and purged several base cabinets in the kitchen, taking the ‘just toss it’ approach. Spaces were emptied, vacuumed, scrubbed. What remained was reorganized. My goal, and so far so good, is to establish a rotation of use for various appliances - a metal insert slow cooker roaster is better suited for certain dishes while the ceramic insert ‘official’ slow cooker is ideally suited for other things. To avoid a lot of bending over and reaching into cabinets to lift out some heavy cooking appliance, I leave my favourite, often used ‘slow’ cookers on the counter. Those less or rarely used appliances are given away. Do you have such appliances in your cupboards? You know what to do! I’ve given away a few appliances that after many years of use and enjoyment needed to find another home, to be used by someone who enjoyed kitcheny things as much as I do. A dehydrator is about to be rehomed very soon.
If you have several counter top appliances that you’ve not used in months, donate them to your local Habitat for Humanity store or other such outlet that takes donations. I had no problem ‘letting go’ of the stuff in the kitchen cupboards. Up next, the ‘cubby’ under the stairs in the den. Slow n steady! Psst, there is a Coleman stove and two lanterns in there. Hmm! I am NOT a camper! Call first!
After a friend or family member has felt safe enough to let you help with decluttering, leave them with an uncluttering gift, perhaps a pan of lasagna, portioned and wrapped in single servings ready for the freezer. If you’re invited to join your friend for a lasagna lunch or dinner - accept! That date has potential to create another opportunity for you to take another step in helping with decluttering. Swapping an uncluttering gift with a period of decluttering also has potential for an added bonus - meeting new people.
Dropping off things you no longer need to various service agencies gets you connected to people with whom you may find a common interest. Those networking opportunities serve also to break into the isolation felt by and those who otherwise may feel they don’t ‘fit’ anywhere and with that comes improved physical and emotional health and wellness as time away from the ‘safe zone’ is increased. Lapses and lags in physical and emotional health often contribute to cluttering/hoarding, so being able to get out and about to engage in meaningful social gatherings may help resolve a lot of anxiety and dial back the ‘need’ to hang on to stuff. He who is isolated may start inviting people ‘in’ and the reasons for concerning behaviour may melt away.
Perhaps today will be the day you’ll explore a plan to share both uncluttering and decluttering gifts.
Carla MacInnis Rockwell is a freelance writer and disability rights advocate living outside Fredericton, NB with Miss Lexie, a rambunctious Maltese and Mr. Malcolm, a boisterous Havanese. She can be reached via email at Carla MacInnis Rockwell
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