All Categories

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 20 - Spring Ephemerals

3/7/2025

It’s Spring Ephemerals time out here in the woods of Georgia, US. If you’re a native plant person, if you’re a hiker, if you love tiny flowers, you can’t help but get a little excited at this time of year. The Trout Lily watch started about 3 weeks ago. Phone calls and texts come in every few days from friends saying things like “Are they blooming yet?” Finally, the answer is “yes.” A group of women friends are headed out here on Monday to wander, ooh and ahh, photograph the same photos we take every year. It’s all good.

After the trout lilies come the tiny, tiny bluets. Then the fabulous diamorpha. Then the trillium, rabbit ears and the native azaleas.

There’s a rhythm and a predictability here that makes us feel that all is right in the world. There’s perspective in the woods and the granite outcroppings about landscape, permanence, generational change, aging. Even when things are late, we know they will arrive. Each year my friends and I count ourselves lucky to still be able to do this – to stumble around on the rocks, lay down on the ground in contorted positions for exactly the right shot, to climb up the hills and not be too winded.

What exactly are the things that are important? Foolish humans, thinking it’s our things in our basements. Out here is where it gets real, every day.

Take the Diamorpha Smallii, for instance. This little plant, no more than 3 inches tall, grows in the harshest conditions possible. It grows in only 3 places in Georgia, in granite sand in solution pits on our Monadnocks.

Somehow, its tiny roots cling to life in wind and slashing rain. In January the seeds hatch into what looks like expensive red caviar. Gaining strength, roots and a foothold in the changing sand, the plants slowly push up, the caviar becoming tiny succulent leaves. Bloom stems, no thicker than the finest needle, push up. In April the granite riots with red plants with tiny white blooms. After that, the fragile stems dry and hold the seeds up off the granite for the summer, when ground temperatures of 130 degrees F would simply roast them. In the fall they drop to the sand, and the process begins again.

Perseverance. Tenacity. Resilience. Blooming where you are planted. Pick your life lesson.

The rhythm to life on the granite has seduced me over the last 18 years. The harshness of the landscape captivates me. For something as permanent as granite, it’s always in flux – always sloughing off a blackened layer to show the beautiful graining and white stone hiding inside. I think it’s the sloughing off I’m identifying most with these days. What hardened outer layers can I let go of? What old stuff is holding me back from showing off the beauty inside?

I was talking to my friend Jenny about the Great Cleaning Out back in January, when my wish for the year revealed itself to be “I wish to clean out the old.” (Hah!) Jenny’s advice was “Start with the things, then move on to yourself.” Truth is, cleaning out the things is pretty well finished.

Time to turn the lens on me. I feel more ephemeral every year. What’s the legacy of living I want to leave behind me? What seeds am I holding up on those rocks for the future?

All photos copyright Robbin L Marcus, Stonecrest, GA.

1 Comment

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 19 - The Pros

3/6/2025

1 Comment

There’s an art to getting people to part with their things. Some people have it, some rush in like a bull in a china shop and set themselves up for disaster, usually with their parents or grandparents. All those family dynamics get involved, buttons get pushed, it gets worse.

Coincidentally, my younger friend Meredith, who is currently dealing with transitions around her beloved Grandpa Ford, sent these thoughts this morning: “What to say about the hard and holy work of undoing and unbecoming? It can be tender. It can be terrible. And when approached with humility and loving kindness? It can be transformative. Among many other things.” Well said, my friend.

Helping loved ones navigate successfully into new stages is the hardest, most holy work we get to do on this planet. Being in the room when the ones who brought us into the world go out of it, is an experience like no other.

Another younger friend of mine who seems to be an expert at this is named Liz. Liz lives in Austin TX with her husband and her teenager. A few years ago, it was necessary to move her beloved mother, Ginny, from her Virginia home to closer to her Liz.
I had the privilege of meeting them both before this move, when we joined a group of women from all over the US traveling to Israel with the wife of an Episcopal priest.

Not only were both of our moms named Ginny, there was something about Liz’s mom and their relationship that touched my heart. I could only imagine taking that trip with my mom. It was lovely to see them interact.

A couple of years and a couple of falls later, it became clear that Ginny could no longer live alone. Through social media, I watched both sides of this story unfold. Liz was frustrated because she was working full-time and there was no one in Austin to help her. No business at all dedicated to organizing and transitioning seniors. So, she took a leap of faith and founded one. It’s now her full-time company.

I can’t think of anyone who would be better at this. What we’re looking at is the Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning on a professional scale – how to help well-to-do seniors let go of their 3000 square foot homes and all the possessions they won’t need in assisted living. Organizing auctions and sales. Holding hands. Sitting with tears. Moving boxes. I would think that the gift of doing this for others requires a high degree of mastery and sensitivity, which Liz has in spades.

It’s clear that this work is a labor of love. Liz’s Facebook page recently had this job posting on it, which is worth a thousand other words:

Austin Home Transitions is seeking persons who are organizing gurus and love to set up living spaces. AHT focuses on life transitions for seniors. Typically, we are moving them into retirement communities
AHT needs peeps who:
+ love to organize and have a good eye
+ have a strong work ethic
+ can work as needed
+ can work long days
+ don’t require regular income or benefits
+ don’t require a predictable schedule
+ can lift boxes weighing 5-10 pounds
+ love working with our senior community
Most moves are
+ Day 1 = Pack (6-8 hrs)
+ Day 2 = Off (movers load & unload)
+ Day 3 = Unpack & Organize (7-9 hrs)

Interested? Text, or send an email

This is very rewarding work!

I’ll just leave that right there while calling your attention to the honesty in the words.

I don’t pretend to approach this level of mastery anywhere in my own cleaning process, for myself or for others. It’s hard when you can’t see the forest for the trees, and that’s where organizers come in. If you can afford one to help your family make the tough decisions, it’s likely worth every penny.

Someday, even after all the work we’ve done already, my daughter and I may have to find out.

Resources:
To see more of Meredith’s lovely writing, go here:
https://www.wordmadelife.com/meredith/

Austin Home Transitions: https://www.austinhometransitions.com/who-we-are/

1 Comment

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 18 - The Inconvenient Truth

3/5/2025

1 Comment

Junkyard Campfire Moon, by Baggeb. Used by permission of the artist.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person in possession of goods and fortune, must be in want of a landfill.” - Not-Jane Austen.

They say that if you want to learn about a civilization, find its landfills. From Tribal midden mounds to Edwardian loos, if you want to find out about tools, pottery, food consumed, whatever – find the garbage.

When there were less people on the earth, garbage was less of a problem. When what we tossed was biodegradable, there was less of a problem. Before the age of plastic, we had landfills. Now, we have landmines.

We have microplastics in every form of life, from the fish in the ocean to human’s wombs and testes. This stuff is never, ever going away. From time to time, you hear about someone who has found a way to gather it up in the ocean. Great. Then what? Do they recycle it? Does it become EVEN MORE plastic?

I was horrified to learn, while watching the Netflix docudrama Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy, that we produce about 400 million tons of plastic waste every year. According to the UN, a million plastic bottles are purchased every minute, somewhere on the planet. Approximately 36% of all plastics produced are used in packaging, including single-use plastic products for food and beverage containers. Approximately 85% of this ends up in landfills or as unregulated waste.

And we got here in my lifetime.

When I think of the things my ancestors treasured, they were natural materials, often crafted by hand– glass, porcelain, linens, laces, precious metals, wood. When I look at the picture I posted in Day 3 of this series of sweet items from my grandfather’s basement bar, not one of them is plastic.

Contrast that with a trip to Target. Or Walmart. Or even the grocery store. Spend your next trip being aware of the sheer amount of plastic being sold and used in the store. Look hard at all the things that are meant to be disposed – not reused. Not possible to recycle.

Consider that with the stories we now know about how little of the plastic recycling stream actually gets processed. It’s miniscule. It’s defeating.

I have no answers for you, friends. Other than to ask you to do what you can. Look for people who recycle electronics and more challenging plastics (really.) Don’t necessarily trust your curbside pickup, if you still have it. You’ll have to work harder to do your part.

In my cleaning out, I have first looked for ways for people to reuse what I don’t want. If that doesn’t happen directly, I donate to organizations that only take what they think they can sell and return or recycle the rest. Sometimes I put items on the curb with a “Free” sign. They almost always disappear. The landfill is the very last option, and I hate to use it.

It’s clear those in charge are not interested in saving the planet. If it’s going to happen, like so much real change, it will be grassroots. And we’re tired. It’s all a lot, right now.

Gaia needs us. If we’re not careful, she, in her entirety, will be this civilization’s landfill.

Resources:
UN Environmental Programme - https://www.unep.org/interactives/beat-plastic-pollution/
Netflix – Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy. https://www.netflix.com/title/81554996
Plastic Free July - https://www.plasticfreejuly.org
CHaRM recycling center - https://livethrive.org/charm/

Photo at top, Junkyard Campfire Moon by Baggeb, a 19 year old artist from Sweden.
Pixabay (Image #5337048) used with permission of the artist.

1 Comment

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 17 - Transformations

3/4/2025

2 Comments

It’s been just about a full year since I opened the first box down there in the basement and got the cleaning-out process started. I had a driving need to “get ready,” to create closure and make space for new beginnings. Here’s what’s happened in that year:

I retired from the program and the adjunct professorship I created for myself at George Mason University.
I moved an entire van worth of furniture and stuff up to my daughter’s house.
There’s empty shelving in the basement.
I cut back on my piano students dramatically this fall.
Next month my national board service for the Country Dance and Song Society ends after 6 years.
I may have finally learned how to say “no” to things I think I should do, but don’t really want to. (Maybe.)
I am listening to myself better and doing a lot more asking for what I want.

A year gone by, and while I have made a lot of space in my life, those new beginnings are manifesting in their own time, which is to say, slowly.

In January, I drew Oracle cards for the year. My March card was Claim Your Sovereignty, with this description.

“Don’t be afraid of your transformation. Release your old ideas and false beliefs as easily and naturally as a snake sheds it’s skin. Stand in the center of your life. Even amid change, take up space, without contorting or contracting to make others more comfortable. Embody the power that was once denied you.”

Strong and powerful words, which I’m taking seriously. So many ways to look at the idea of "taking space."

This space-making also includes opening mental and physical space for things I’ve always wanted but never allowed myself to have, such as handmade pottery dishes. Dave and I recently invested in a very simple service for 4 – four each dinner plates, lunch plates and bowls. It’s so lovely. It’s enough. We deserve it. If we break one, we'll buy another.

I have put up wallpaper on a few accent walls in February because I like it. I painted a small room bright peach because it makes me happy. I hung some of my rediscovered hats and old mirrors on the walls.
This cleaning out process has not been about denying myself. Not at all. More about coming into myself. Enjoying having less. Having more of what matters to me and less detritus that I’ve been dragging around for years.

I can tell you that I feel lighter. There’s been a lot of healing in the letting go. Things in my family were never just Things – there was a lot of emotional attachment around them. That, I think, is mostly gone for me now. The space of years is kind that way.

The door has been opened, the hearth has been swept, the warm breeze is stirring. Spring is arriving.

2 Comments

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 16 - holy sites

3/3/2025

3 Comments

An evocative photo of my mother – also in the box, also kept by my father.

the places in our heart
where the world took bites
out of us

may never fully heal
and will likely become
wide open spaces

~ be careful to not fill them
with just anything or anyone

your wounds aren’t supposed
to become attics for you to hoard
unnecessary junk

these holes in our hearts
are holy sites

and we should treat
them as such

so when visiting your old wounds
make sure to take your shoes off
and turn off your cellphone

sit by candlelight
and watch how the shadows
tell the story how brave you are

~ to survive

(john roedel)

Questions forever unanswered.

When I look, I see a beautiful woman in her early 40’s looking out into the unknown.
Fuzzy, like her limited vision always was.
A limited edition,
She strains to see a future she will never know.

Through mists of time I look back at my father looking back at my mother.
Did any of us know? Do we ever?

No one survives; no one comes in knowing when they are going out.

Who tends the holy sites when we are gone?
Who knows when the veil is thin?
Who heals them in another generation?

3 Comments

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 15 - Convolution

2/28/2025

4 Comments

I realize now, the guilt was baked inside the china. It was always about the damned china.

My grandparents were “as poor as church mice” (their words) when they got married. My grandmother, motherless, the only child of an Italian immigrant working as a milkman in New York City. My grandfather, born in 1909, the youngest boy of 11 in a family so poor they wore clothes homemade from flour sacks, and burned the coals they’d picked up from along the railroad track.

My grandfather slowly worked his way up from bank teller, hired because he had graduated high school and could play baseball for the bank team, to Vice President of HR by his retirement in the early 1970s.

It wasn’t until the 50s, when my parents had already met and were courting long distance between Maine and NY, that my grandparents began to experience some quiet affluence in their lives. They’d scrimped and saved and were finally moving to the suburbs to their first (and only) house. My grandmother got to furnish a home in the most modern blonde-wood furniture from top to bottom. My parents became engaged during the time my father was stationed in Japan during the Korean conflict. It must have been an incredibly exciting time for both mother and daughter.

A sure sign of affluence in those postwar days was to own things, and my grandmother jumped right on that bandwagon. What she wanted most was a set of china. China meant you’d made it – you could afford something so fragile that you were almost afraid to use it. My mother, too, wanted a set of china plates for her wedding. This was going to be expensive.

My father came to the rescue – near the base where he was stationed in Japan was a china factory. They must have done a brisk business with American GIs. My father, through the mail, sent pattern ideas home to my mother and grandmother, who were able to basically design what they wanted – a plate with a simple gold rim and a pink rose in the middle. This was a far less expensive way to purchase china than going through an American department store and, they had something totally unique. They decided to purchase a set of 12; each one of them would have six settings. They could share when they needed to as my parents planned to settle in the suburbs nearby after their wedding. Back home, they purchased the same silver setting – 8 sets for each household – in a lovely, simple rose pattern to match the plates.

Later on, here was the rub. They had something totally unique. Heaven forbid you should break a plate.

Growing up, I remember china moving back and forth between our houses when needed. My grandmother almost never entertained, so the bulk was with us. There were serving pieces added over the years. I really had no idea the extent of what was there.

When I got married, I never got to pick out a china pattern of my own. I was always told that when the time came, I’d have a set of 12. I don’t think they expected me to live 4 hours away from home. My mother quickly came to realize that marrying into a large family I’d need something for entertaining, so she bought me a cheap set of 16 plates I never would have chosen for myself at a registry. They could go in the dishwasher. They were ugly, but I never looked back.

I told myself that if I’d had the good china, it just would have been a headache – always worrying about my in-laws breaking it or not washing it properly.

I thought I’d get at least service for 6 when my mother died. But no. My grandmother wouldn’t let go. She “might entertain.” I was routinely serving dinner for 12-15 people, practically monthly, but she “might entertain.”

By the time that china came into my possession, I’d outgrown the need for it. After my grandfather died, I packed it up in NY and then never unpacked the boxes again, until I moved to Atlanta.

There was something symbolic and deeply ironic about finally unpacking those boxes here into a server I’d had built in for the purpose. I remember sitting on the floor in tears. I live in a casual, modern home with a Japanese dining room. We have potlucks when we do entertain. I no longer own any tablecloths. I like my dishwasher. I was never, ever going to use that china here.

And so, it sat, weighing more guilt on me every year. How is it possible for something so simple to be so complex?

Anne told me a while back that she didn’t want it, so last fall I told her I was ready – the time had come for me to get rid of my mother’s china. Amazingly, now that she owns a home, she changed her mind. She’s now the one entertaining 12 – 15 people routinely. She doesn’t have or want a dishwasher. It’s perfect. I hope she uses it until all the plates are chipped or broken. She should enjoy it.

I packed it up. It left last month and I was able to put my old Pfaltzgraff everyday dishes in the server with room to spare. My house and I took a deep breath.

Forward.

Postscript - In the 20 years I owned that china, I never took a single photo of it.

This Meissen china must be what they were interested in copying - the edge of our china is not scalloped and there is a single rose only in the middle. It's the closest I could find on the internet.

4 Comments

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 14 - The Last of the Family

2/27/2025

3 Comments

My Dad, me, Dave and my stepmother at Dave's and my wedding in 2007.

My father was my last living connection to my family of origin, until his passing in 2017. Together he and I death cleaned for my mother, my grandmother and my grandfather – each time growing both closer to each other and more efficient in the process. My father was the single witness to each stage of my life until very recently. He helped me move as a young adult and again as a middle-aged woman, twice. He met and knew both of my husbands. When Dave stepped up at the end of my dad’s life and asked all the tough questions in the hospital, I saw a new respect for him form in my father’s eyes. Although not an emotionally close person, my father loved Anne and I both dearly. I could always count on him to be there if I said I needed him.

There was never a doubt in my mind that I’d get the privilege of helping with the closure of his life, as well. Or was there? I think there was in his mind.

Every time we would go to visit in the last 5 years or so before he died, he’d take me out to the garage and bring out family photo albums from his side of the family. He walked me through each one, identifying himself, his mother, his aunts and uncles, his father. And then he’d ask me to take it home. I had mixed feelings about this, but he was insistent each time.

By the time he passed away, there were only a few things left in the house that I would have liked to have had – a favorite one of his mother’s paintings that hung over the piano while I was growing up, and his few mementos in the safe, which I knew were important to him.

I’ll never see the painting again. I’m reconciled to that.

My father – always efficient, always thoughtful, organized in the way engineers are to predict the future. He knew far more than I did. Years ago, he sat me down and told me exactly what his small estate would entail for me. The rest was headed to my stepmother. This was fine. As it should be.

I always knew where I stood with my dad.

The box of mementos, when it arrived 8 years later from the woman with whom I never knew where I stood, was simply a stunning surprise.

In many ways, this entire cleaning process has been a surprise from beginning to end. Not the least of which is the defensiveness and fear that rises in people’s eyes when I explain what I’m doing. What I want people to understand is that it’s not just about getting rid of things; it’s about learning to value what’s most important to me. It’s about enjoying the possessions I love and letting go of that that no longer serves me. It’s seeing the connections between things I loved, but no longer used, being enjoyed again by my daughter or by friends. It’s been rediscovering the forgotten known and leaving clues for my descendants, so it won’t be forgotten again.

Mostly, it’s been letting go of guilt.

3 Comments

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 13 - A Whole Lotta Death

2/26/2025

3 Comments

During the lockdown part of the pandemic, a lot of things happened simultaneously:

Dave and I started thinking seriously about death and dying. We had our wills updated.
Our bank branch closed, and we had to buy a fireproof house safe and clean out our safety deposit boxes.
I started agitating for a place to lay our heads after death. What if one of us died during COVID? This became more urgent as the whole world faced the possibility of death. Dave was fine being thrown in the ocean. I was not. So rather than spend eternity up in New York where the family plot is, we bought plots in the green cemetery at Monastery of the Holy Spirit, not far from our home.
I started cleaning, slowly, in multiple places over that year.

I read Marie Kondo again, and, she had a television show on cable for a while about her “sparks joy” cleaning method which was slightly less draconian than the book. Turns out she’d had a kid and life got messy, as it always does. I never could advocate throwing all my clothes in the middle of the floor, but I did pile folded clothes from a dresser and then later, hung clothes from a closet on the bed and neatly go through them. Books did get thrown on the floor and it was great. The one lasting thing I learned is how to fold laundry and put it in drawers so you can see everything you have. My drawers all close now. I have less because I can only have what fits in each drawer.

More effective for me was the show “Swedish Death Cleaning,” which if you haven’t watched it or read their materials, I strongly advocate. The idea of doing it so your loved ones don’t have to so resonates with me. They break it down so easily and carefully and involve lots of people who are on board. It’s lovely and is applicable to many forms of considering death. It’s the “Queer Eye” of Death – bring tissues.

Turns out a whole lot of thinking about death lead to a rebirth, as well.

It’s been 10 years since we renovated. I’m redecorating small places that make me happy. Dave says I’m “nesting.” It feels like the next logical part of this new beginning as I move into retirement.

I continue to let go of work, of board committees, of responsibilities. It’s good to be ready for the next chapter in my heart and in my home.

3 Comments

Cleaning out the Old, Day 12 - Formation

2/26/2025

0 Comments

High school friends and I visiting during college in my parent's house. The chair we are all resting on, Grandmother's painting on the wall and the piano all ended up with me.

In my parent’s home, I was conceived.
After birth, I was cared for, loved beyond measure. That, I never doubted.

Who I became, what I valued, my ethical code, the way “life worked” – all of these things I learned at my mother’s knee. Directly, yes, sometimes. Indirectly, perhaps even more.

My family kept things. We reused many things. My mother never had a scrap of fabric or yarn that she didn’t keep for a craft project, or the quilt she was going to make someday. We kept bread twist ties and rubber bands. Paper grocery bags. Frugality reigned in our home; it needed to.

From birth to age 22, when I left that home for good, I learned to save all the things. Letters, school projects, embroidery yarn, whatever. Mementos from childhood. Vinyl record albums, that traveled back and forth to college with me.

As a young person on my own, I acquired what I needed to live in a small apartment. It wasn’t much – my first sleeper sofa I came to hate. A coffee table that now lives in Anne’s house. Lots of hand me down furniture made up the rest.

At 25, I got married. It was an idyllic time, looking back on it all. It crashed to an end soon afterward, when I was 27. From then on, I had to learn to clean out other people’s things.

First was my mother’s house, and I was so young and emotionally devasted that I let my grandmother take the lead and keep far more than she should have. We got rid of some things that my father wasn’t going to use. I furnished my kitchen from her gourmet baking tools and my house with Aunt Grace’s antiques.

I learned then to only take things I thought I would use. No knickknacks. No art other than my father’s mothers’ paintings. My own boxes from my closet. Pared down, but packed into the little house Ed and I bought a year later. I didn’t know how much my father had stuffed into the attic over the years until he sold that house upon remarriage, when we had to do it again.

When my grandmother died of a broken heart 7 years after my mother, I helped my grandfather pare down. We started by removing the plastic covers from the living room furniture that had driven us both nuts for years. There may have been a high five involved when we were finished.

From the sublime to the ridiculously packed cupboards and closets, we pared down a lot. My grandfather wanted to keep most of the things on display in the house, so I knew I’d face those again someday.

My grandfather survived another 15 years without her and, hid away a lot of things we thought we’d gotten rid of after my dad and I left.

In the middle of that was my divorce.

At 45 years old, just before my grandfather died, I’d finally moved into my own house as a single adult, with the things I wanted to take there. And no more. I knew what I had to face, one more time.

Lessons learned in a life of death cleaning for others:

Only keep things you will use. Throw out the scraps.
If you’re still acquiring at my age, you’ve got a problem.
If you haven’t worn it for a year, get rid of it by swapping it, selling it, donating it.
Move often. For a while it was once every five years. It helped me pare down every time.
Have a few items you value and are attached to. Let the rest go.
Loss sucks. Grief doesn't stop when you want it to. Try to keep your wits about you when death cleaning for someone else.
All of this is easier said than done.

0 Comments

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 11 - I am Gen Jones

2/24/2025

0 Comments

I consider myself part of Generation Jones. The Jonesers are a small subset of the baby boom - our dates run from 1954-1965, which puts our dates overlapping the official end of the Baby Boom and the start of Gen X. The term was coined by American cultural commentator Jonathan Pontell, who argues that the term refers to a full distinct generation born from 1954 to 1965.

Read these qualifications from a Wikipedia article and see what you think, if you’re born in that time span:

Members of Generation Jones were children and teens during Watergate, the oil crisis, and stagflation. Unlike "Leading-Edge Boomers", most of Generation Jones did not grow up with World War II veterans as parents, and, as they reached adulthood, there was no compulsory military service and no defining political cause, as opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War was for the older boomers. Much of their parents' generation was sandwiched between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers. Also, by 1955, a majority of U.S. households had at least one television set, and so unlike Leading-Edge Boomers born from 1946 to 1953, many members of Generation Jones (trailing-edge boomers) have never lived in a world without television. Generation Jones were children during the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and were young adults when HIV/AIDS became a worldwide threat in the 1980s.

The name "Generation Jones" has several connotations, including a large anonymous generation, a "keeping up with the Joneses" competitiveness and the slang word "jones" or "jonesing", meaning a yearning or craving. Pontell suggests that Jonesers inherited an optimistic outlook as children in the 1960s but were then confronted with a different reality as they entered the workforce during Reaganomics and the shift from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, which ushered in a long period of mass unemployment. Mortgage interest rates increased to above 12 percent in the mid-eighties, making it virtually impossible to buy a house on a single income. De-industrialization arrived in full force in the mid-late 1970s and 1980s; wages would be stagnant for decades, and 401(k)s replaced pensions, leaving them with a certain abiding "jonesing" quality for the more prosperous days of the past.

Generation Jones is noted for coming of age after a huge swath of their older siblings in the earlier portion of the Baby Boomer population; thus, many note that there was a paucity of resources and privileges available to them that were seemingly abundant to older Boomers. Therefore, there is a certain level of bitterness and "jonesing" for the level of doting and affluence granted to older Boomers but denied to them.

Boom.

I found my place.

I have never felt like a baby boomer, nor was I a “latch-key” Gen Xer. For me, this definition sums it all up. We watched our older brothers and sisters get it all – sex, drugs and rock and roll with all the fun, and my generation had all the consequences – AIDS, illegalization of LSD, arrests for having small amounts of pot, and then, disco. Yes, we were bitter.
On television we were constantly bombarded with perfect families and with toys we all should own. We acquired because we were told to, day in day out, by the shining light on the wall that everyone watched together at the same time. Imagine that.

Our parents worked hard to feed this myth. They bought us what they could. The Vietnam war and, later, Watergate were our dinner companions. All in the Family grew to define many of our homes far better than the Brady Bunch ever did.

In high school, I remember feeling bitter, angry and confused when the officials made it much harder for us to enjoy what our older brothers and sisters had generous access to. After graduating college and grad school with my high-rate student loans (albeit nothing to today’s young people) I was both angry and terrified that I couldn’t get a job or find a place to live that I could afford. Back then it was practically a crime to move in with your parents after graduation. I was thrilled to find a low-paying job in a private school – at least I was working.

The desire for things, for acquiring, was baked into us as children. As parents, we did no differently. No wonder our homes are chock full. No wonder our children have become minimalists.

Learning about Generation Jones was what kicked off this whole desire to pare down my belongings. Watching my child and her generation furnish their homes sparsely, but with beautiful high-quality furniture choices from our parent’s mid-century homes has really influenced me to not want to screw that up.

My things leave with me or before me. I get to choose.

0 Comments

<<Previous

Forward>>

Robbin Marcus

An occasional post from me, about stuff that interests me.

2025 blog series:
Cleaning Out the Old

2024 blog selections: Resistance

2023 blog series:
Slow Forward

2020 blog series:
1) Processing - Experience, Thought, Action
2) Diving for Light - Shedding light on a dark time

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 20 - Spring Ephemerals

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 19 - The Pros

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 18 - The Inconvenient Truth

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 17 - Transformations

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 16 - holy sites

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 15 - Convolution

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 14 - The Last of the Family

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 13 - A Whole Lotta Death

Cleaning out the Old, Day 12 - Formation

Cleaning Out the Old, Day 11 - I am Gen Jones

Robbin Marcus

2019 blog series:
Exploring the Power of Habit

Archives

Robbin Marcus

2019 blog series: Exploring the Power of Habit

Archives

2019 blog series:
Exploring the Power of Habit