Pandemic decluttering
For many during the virus, home became an office or a school too
Lizbeth Meredith never considered herself a hoarder. Perish the thought this minute.
But with the arrival of the coronavirus last year, 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 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 and 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,” 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 — Meredith does not even like hot dogs — and several ottomans. “I don’t need to put my feet up every time I sit down,” she said.
COVID-19 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 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, 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 workingfrom-home parents. But that was the situation her family faced last year when the pandemic hit.
“At dinner, a week after we got our kids from their college campuses, I said, ‘If we’re all going to be here, we have to figure out how to run our days and where we’re all going to be. We have to get rid of things in order to find workspaces,’ ” said Smith, an etiquette expert, who told her children to devote an hour each day to culling their possessions. Castoffs were put in the hall, some to be sold, some donated, some recycled.
“The pandemic forced people to look at their stuff. They were overwhelmed by their stuff, and they took the opportunity to cleanse,” said Matt Paxton, a downsizing and decluttering expert whose Emmy-nominated PBS series “Legacy List With Matt Paxton” begins its third season in January.
“We saw this from young families to seniors who had been putting it off for years,” he said. “There’s been a big rush to simplify.”
It is a story told partly in tonnage. The amount of refuse (as distinct from recyclables) New York City’s Department of Sanitation collected from July through September 2020 was up roughly 9% from the same period in 2019.
“We definitely saw a change in behavior. There were more bulky items in the residential curbside set-outs, people putting out more sofas and armoires,” said Edward Grayson, the city’s sanitation commissioner.
Consignment and not-for-profit thrift shops have, similarly, been on the front line of pandemic purges. “Everyone has been overloaded with incoming merchandise,” said Adele Meyer, executive director of NARTS: The Association of Resale Professionals. “This is an experience our industry hasn’t gone through before.”
Recessions tend to increase the number of customers, Meyer said, but “what the pandemic has brought out is a surge of suppliers.”
Those who initially had modest decluttering plans — cleaning out a single closet, perhaps, or the junk drawer in the kitchen — soon became ensorcelled.
“I really got into it,” said Andrea Burnett, 58, a book publicist who lives with her family in a three-bedroom house in Richmond, California. “Because there was nothing else to do, I was watching ‘The Home Edit,’ ” Burnett said, referring to the Netflix series “Get Organized With the Home Edit.” “Everything streaming that I could watch on the topic became my declutter porn.”
“Do I need this?” became the question Burnett mentally asked herself about nearly everything in the house. Few objects could justify their presence. Clothing, appliances, china, lamps, furniture and art supplies were donated to the Humane Society and a local women’s shelter.
“The only things that were safe,” Burnett said, “were the French press and my bed.”
For some, decluttering provided a nice little source of income in straitened times. When Lisa Wells was furloughed from her job as a publicist during the pandemic, she finally had time to take a long, hard look at the two-bedroom apartment she shares with her husband, Jonathan, in New York.
“I started at one end and made my way across,” she said. “There didn’t seem to be any end to the stuff I had squirreled away.”
There was plenty of stuff to donate — T-shirts and exercise clothes — and a Goodwill drop box located right in her building made it a breeze. But Wells, 59, also discovered that there was gold in the boxes stashed under the bed and on shelves, gold in the double-hung clothes.
She has sold purses and shoes, including a Longchamps bag and Ferragamo flats, on e-commerce sites such as Tradesy and Poshmark.
Other lucrative items include a bracelet, a necklace, a tennis backpack that once belonged to her son, a Wedgewood teapot and a Limoges teapot.
“It’s a great diversion,” Wells said. “I don’t have any hobbies, so this is my hobby. I’ve made a decent amount of money, and I have a little bit more space in my closets now.”
Those who went full-on Marie Kondo during the pandemic say they have gained more than extra closet space. “I feel much calmer in my house,” Smith said. “Every little thing that you have takes some type of attention, and when you pare down to the things you really like and use, there are fewer things occupying your focus.”