When we moved to the Boston area in 2005, we bought a barn and moved into the house on the same lot. We needed that barn to store all of the stuff we were bringing to thickly settled New England from the spacious Midwest. And, just like the goldfish that grows to the size of its bowl, the barn is full.
The main floor of the building is a three-car garage; the huge loft houses all past hobbies, seasonal decorations, old furniture, and mementos. The dirt cellar stores outdoor furniture and miscellaneous junk that we aren’t ready to part with. With the exception of the cars, this is how much of the stuff in this building could be categorized.
In 2014, we had an extended family of squirrels make their way into the loft. We hired a pest removal company to catch them one-by-one in live traps, for around $100 per squirrel. In Massachusetts, at least back then, it was illegal to catch and release squirrels, so the pest company took them from our property and destroyed them. In a few hundreds of dollars – er, days—they were gone, and we had someone come in to help us stop up the holes in the walls where the squirrels had entered.
The loft would be a great spot for a man-cave or a she-shed. In the wall facing the driveway, there is a large sliding patio door with a small deck and an octagonal window above it. It faces east and the morning sun cascades into the space. At the back of the barn is another small octagonal window high up toward the peak. The old wooden roof beams rocket to the sky, mimicking the architecture of a church sanctuary. The prior owners were working toward making this a poker room and had started plumbing a bathroom in the front corner. The idea got no further than pipes sticking up through the floor that now act as tripping hazards.
Once the squirrels were gone, we found remnants of squirrel poop scattered throughout. The patio door proved extremely useful at that point: we parked a big dumpster under the door and dropped damaged goods out from the deck above the dumpster. Squirrel poop had an amazing effect on determining what was good and what was garbage. What were we willing to clean poop off of in order to keep? A powerful decluttering technique.
We get into the loft through a doorway in the back corner of the garage, on the ground level of the barn. A long steel staircase runs up the back side of the barn. Early in the spring of 2014, I opened the door and saw Christmas ornaments spewed down the stairs, together with the shoe box that had contained them. Momentarily, I was convinced a human trespasser had been or still was in the loft. I called out and listened for a reply. Nothing. That was my introduction to the squirrels in the loft. The ornaments were not just boxes of red Christmas balls that could easily be replaced. They were plaster of Paris, hand-painted ornaments that I had made in 1982. I collected the broken pieces, rewrapped them in the strewn tissue paper, and tucked them back into the box. I put the lid on it. Last November, I handed the box to Bill to see if he could find glue to hold the pieces together. Bill, an engineer, knows these things about materials and what kind of glue will hold. I’m good with Elmer’s glue. Read that as for seven years, I couldn’t bring myself to fix these ornaments, for I knew they would never be perfect again. Bill worked his magic, and for Christmas, I laid the mended ornaments out on a table for a few days, then returned them to their box, wondering how to more safely display them in the future.
In early March, I carried out the last tub of winter decorations to put away in the loft. At the loft door, I loudly knocked three times and called out, “Coming up!” If there are any small animal species up there, I want them to know I’m coming up. And they should go hide. This is how I have entered the loft ever since the squirrel incident in 2014.
All of our seasonal decorations are in the loft. They are stored in rodent-poop-proof tubs. We’ve been in the house for 16 years, and now as seasons roll around the prospect of pulling these tubs down from the loft and across the drive to the house, especially in snow, appeals to me less and less. I went up to look through the Easter tubs ten days before the holiday. I had to dig past three craft tubs to find the two Easter tubs—they were to the right of the twenty Christmas tubs. As I dug through those big plastic vessels, I decided that the spring decorations I already had on display, blue and yellow vases and flowers, would be more utilitarian and last for the months of spring rather than just the week of Easter. The baby chicks and bunnies would not be making an appearance.
Then, having a change of heart, on Maundy Thursday, I made two trips to the loft and brought down an armful of Easter decorations each time. I left my sons’ childhood Easter decorations in the tubs. I brought in glass rabbit bowls, a wicker Easter basket, and metal silhouettes of a light green bunny and a light yellow chick. Each are about ten inches tall and have small white light bulbs around their perimeter that light up. I flanked the blue vase on the mantle with these creatures.
This past winter, Bill entertained the thought of setting up an indoor net in the loft where he could hit golf balls when snow was on the ground. We went up to the loft one time together. With few words we came back down. Overwhelmed. A dumpster was needed.
I returned to the loft a few days later on my own; I thought I’d look specifically for documents that could be destroyed—a starting point for perhaps making room for a golf net next winter. Four boxes of tax papers and old bills, dated from the early 2000s, would be a good start at thinning out the loft. A week later, Bill and I went up together so I could show him which ones could be shredded. After I pointed out those boxes, I picked off the lids of a few others with mysterious labels thinking we could each take one box into the house to sort. “Bill’s stuff from June’s loft” was written on one tardis. This box from his mum’s loft looked compact and therefore easy to deal with. However, it was as deceiving as our ranch-style house that we lived in when we were first married. The house looked small from the front, but inside, the rooms strung out toward the backyard and to the side behind the garage. The steps to the basement revealed a lower level the full length of the house that was invisible from the street. And the patio door in the basement opened up to a three-quarter acre lot filled with perennial flowers and a lush green lawn. This smallish box in the loft was that complex. And, it was a time machine.
Boxes like this are the reason I do not want to start this clearing-out-the-loft project. One box can be cavernous in memories and in the decision-making of what to keep and how to store the treasures. Bill was catapulted to his childhood with an A-level test book, an old yearly planner, various medals, and his judo certificate among the artifacts. Similarly, I lifted another box lid to find a cloth bag full of papers, and out of the top peeked a letter. “Dear Linda,” in my grandma’s handwriting. I would take this one bag to the house and go through it. It was a start. A tiny start. I left Bill in his tardis and made my way back to the house.
I held the bag by the handles as I brought it into the house, and all the papers settled to the bottom of the bag. My grandma’s handwriting had shifted and sunken into the pile. I grabbed a handful of greeting cards and pulled them onto the counter. I’ve only started recycling hand-written cards in the last couple of years, and every time it pains me to place them into the bin. In this bag were cards from family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers—friends of friends. They were sent to me in 2009 and 2010, the breast cancer years.
In those chemo days when my immune system was compromised, I lived relatively close to home. I wore gloves to the grocery store and had coffee once a week with two dedicated Tuesday-we-have-coffee-and-normal-non-cancer-conversation friends. Otherwise, I avoided public places and pre-school events where there might be snotty-nosed kids, and even kept my distance from my two sons if they had a fever or a cough.
Back then, those cards stood in for physical connections. Finding and reading them this week did the same thing again. The wishes were still warm some twelve years after they were written, and their balm welcome in the thirteenth month of the pandemic. I’m now set on the task of finding a place to keep them—well away from the recycling bin. I cannot yet part with the warmth that flooded over me from this small collection of paper.