As much as I love to relax on the weekends and fully enjoy my unstructured time, I volunteered nearly three hours to help someone I care about with the manifestation of a crisis that she’s been surviving for over 32 years. It all began when she birthed a special needs child.
Not that her son’s autism was visible at birth. Even when it became apparent that he was “sensitive,” there still wasn’t a specific diagnosis, which would have been coupled with age-appropriate treatment and interventions at school. As a matter of fact, she herself could have had a support group outside of her own family with other parents of children with autism.
Presently, after more than three decades of being a single mom of a child with autism, the challenge shows in a car and home that are filled to the brim with things. At first blush, I’d call all of it “junk,” but nearly everything has a story, a purpose, a reason for its contribution to the heap of things that I’d love to bag up indiscriminately and haul off either to Goodwill or the landfill. The real mantra in this case is: Donate, Organize, Recycle, or Trash.
Yet, I asked as neutrally as possible if she still wanted certain things, small bags of which were the remains of art projects. For all of those, we concluded that the best course of action would be to set them all aside for her to consolidate the contents.
Another solid decision was to bag up the piles of clothing that she and her son could no longer wear. That cleared a remarkably amount of precious floor space.
In the end, we took three carloads to Goodwill and filled her home recycling and trash bins. At the same time, we’d only removed just one layer of stuff, still not accomplishing the goal of clearing her living room by shifting all that stuff that would be retained and organized to the spare bedroom, which also had been filled to the brim.
I offered to return the following Saturday with the goal of pulling all the books that I’d discovered during this first pass through. She expressed a strong desire to keep certain books, but admitted that many could be donated. She also stated that throughout the week, she’d go through all the “mail” that was kept in bags, a crude filing system.
Other bags of paper merely looked like junk mail, but since she’s an art teacher, everything could have eventually find a home in a future art project. Fortunately, most of it found its way into the recycling bin.
After the last load of things were donated to Goodwill, we treated ourselves to a deluxe milkshake, followed by takeout from a Thai restaurant. Having dessert first is a good way to celebrate.
The next day, I treated myself to a mani pedi, which felt more luxurious than previous trips to the nail salon.