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WHY DIFFERENT GENERATIONS COLLECT DIFFERENT STUFF If you’re cleaning out the home of older generations, you’ll likely notice how differently they consumed and collected stuff than we do in

our current era. I hadn’t realized this until cleaning Etta’s home. Etta was an entirely different species from me or my dad. As we talked that day, I understood for the first time the

significance of that generation gap. Etta was a child of the Great Depression. Those of us who have grown up in more prosperous times might not understand what it was like to come of age

when scarcity was the norm, not the exception. But those who lived through it never forget it. Soup kitchens and bread lines. Labor strikes and Dust Bowls. “One-third of a nation ill-housed,

ill-clad, and ill-nourished,” as President Franklin Roosevelt said in 1937. These traumatic memories became part of a generation’s DNA. Starting with Etta and continuing for the last

twenty-plus years, I have worked with that generation and witnessed the indelible imprint the Depression left upon millions of people. It’s not always detectable in their words or actions

out in public—but it’s visible in their homes. But I didn’t know that yet. So at first, I wondered why Etta seemed to keep everything. Why hold on to those skinny yellow plastic bags tossed

on her porch every morning with the newspapers? And the rubber bands wrapped around the armrest of her rocking chair? She had a stack of bulletins from every church service I think she ever

attended; it looked like fifty years of neatly stacked Sundays. I was stupefied at the sheer amount of _stuff_ this petite woman possessed. Starting in the dining room and moving to the

basement and the attic, we went to work, packing things up, picking and choosing what to keep and what to donate or discard, and, most of all, talking and laughing. And crying. Tears welled

up in Etta’s eyes as she looked at a note from her father, in his rough handwriting, when he’d left home for months to go out in the world in search of work. She showed me his pocket watch,

which she remembered him pulling out of a vest pocket often to ensure they’d be on time for appointments. That story led to others: She and her brother splitting a single slice of bread

because that was all they had to eat that day. The Christmas when all her mother could afford for her children was a gift of a single orange and a peppermint stick. Etta told me with

delight, with gratitude for her good fortune, the luxurious treat of sucking the juice out of the orange through the peppermint stick. I felt like I was not just helping Etta go through her

stuff; I was in the trenches with her. As I got to know her, I began to understand why she had so much stuff: For people who had nothing at one time, anything they have is precious. More

than sixty years later, Etta hadn’t lost the feeling that one day, abundance might suddenly disappear, leaving her with nothing once again. And then every plastic bag, every last rubber band

would be as precious as coins and paper bills. Wading through her belongings and talking to Etta about her memories of deprivation, I started to understand something that would later become

essential to my life’s work: People hoard to cover up pain. The scarcity Etta had suffered when she was younger stayed with her for the rest of her life. She wanted to have enough in her

home so that she would never, ever run out. And plastic bags and rubber bands aside, she was damned proud of the possessions she and Jim had worked their tails off to earn. That made parting

with them all the more difficult. Penguin Random House Etta explained something else to me: As a full-time homemaker for decades, entertaining guests, friends, and family was deeply

important to her. _That_ was why she always kept the house spotless and stocked with enough supplies to serve a small army. When I first got there, I wondered: Who could ever use that many

card tables? I’d been to some underground casinos in my time, but something told me that Etta wasn’t a card shark running an after-hours club in her basement. And enough platters and serving

utensils to open a catering business? Now I understood. Jim had been a big-time tobacco executive. He was a strong, sturdy, reliable man—a pillar of the community. I admired him when I was

young. People like him built Richmond into the city it is today. But now I was seeing Etta, too, as a pillar. For decades, even while raising two kids, she was ready at any time should Jim

bring a colleague, supervisor, or client over to be fed and charmed. Her home, the items she took such pride in, proved her commitment to her family and community. After I spent a few hours

helping Etta sort through her memories, she began putting her stuff into perspective. This early in the process, we are only slowly coming around to the idea that it’s not always the pocket

watch we love; it’s the person who wore it. The goal is not to make any hasty decisions about what to toss and what to keep. It’s to begin to build the trust necessary to decide together. By

the time Etta had recounted some of her most cherished memories, and I’d listened with an open mind and heart, she felt she trusted me enough for me to start doing my job. On one of the

days I was working with Etta, while in her jam-packed attic, I picked up a grainy black-and-white picture of two young couples sitting at a table, smiling at the camera. The women, probably

between eighteen and twenty years old, were simply beautiful. They wore pearls, white gloves, and fancy dresses. Both of the men were in military uniform, grinning, handsome, and happy.

“Who’s this?” I asked. Etta smiled. She pointed to one of the couples. “That’s me and Jim.” “That’s _you_?” I asked. Etta nodded. The woman standing in front of me was lovely and powerful,

but she was a blue-haired eighty-year-old who looked a bit older. I, twenty-five years old and drunk with the delusions of eternal youthfulness, had a hard time squaring the photo with the

woman before me. “Etta,” I said, “you were a knockout!” She smiled and then excitedly showed me a pack of matches that were nearly hidden amid the clutter. It bore the logo of a place named

Tantilla Gardens. All my life I’d lived in Richmond, but I’d never even heard of Tantilla Gardens. Etta told me that the picture was taken there on the night her then-suitor Jim had just

returned from World War II and got dropped off at the train station just up the street. For Etta,_ this_ was the image that the photo brought to mind. For me, the snapshot was just a fading

shot of two good-looking happy young couples. For Etta, the picture was a precious reminder of an unforgettable time in her life, an early glimpse of the man she’d spend her life with. It

was proof of the world she’d once inhabited. Of the young man she’d once pined for, of the young woman she’d once been, and of the man she deeply loved for a lifetime. No wonder she had held

on to it and to _everything_ in her home. They were items that seemed random and unnecessary to me but contained life-affirming memories for her. She wasn’t hoarding or holding on to junk;

she was celebrating the incredible life that she and her husband had lived together. I was learning that this was more than just stuff. I was starting to realize in fact that it had almost

nothing to do with the stuff; it was all about the memories behind the stuff. She pointed out something in the photograph that I hadn’t noticed: a paper bag sitting on the table. There was

booze in it, she told me, giving me a mischievous look that made her appear for a moment as if she were eighteen years old all over again. Good Baptist ladies didn’t drink in public, I

knew—but if they did, they put the liquor bottle in a brown paper bag to be discreet.