Some friends of mine keep a neat and tidy house. I don’t. I’m surrounded by organized chaos—I know where almost everything is, but seldom is it in the same place twice. A former husband, a neatnik, was fond of saying “a place for everything and everything in its place.” That was the closest he ever came to a lecture, delivered usually as he was picking up after me.

I admire those who know how they wish to decorate be it with blended colours, period furniture, or carefully selected knickknacks. I can’t do it. I have a better sense of what I don’t want in my house than what I do. Consequently I have a mishmash of stuff—conflicting colours, no theme, and sometimes a mere path through the conglomeration.

Many moons ago in another life we saved enough to have an interior decorator advise on the refurbishing of our living and dining rooms. My husband had just been appointed to a rather senior position and I assumed we would be expected to entertain in a finer-than-me style. We had new carpet, new drapes, new furniture in a contemporary colour scheme. I still shudder at the result: not only was it not me, it was horrid! Rowdy kids soon brought my home back to my comfort zone.

Between then and now there were two or three other residences. Children grew up and were out on their own; a new husband was in place. He was a neaternik than the first and for the sake of harmony we agreed on a compromise: I cooked, he cleaned up. I was to pick up after myself or he was out of there. We divided the housekeeping jobs and both opted for comfort in furniture and privacy in drapery. All was good until he died, and I was on my own. I reverted to my inborn instinct.

My preference was (still is) to live in the country surrounded by wildness. Bye-bye downtown condo; hello camp on the river.

Now I had a collection of “stuff and styles” and I wanted to keep all of it around me—how to fit it in? I managed to do it; my home is now overstuffed and has no style other than early attic. I live among some delightfully early antiques and some junk. More dishes surround me than I can use in my lifetime, and still I’m attracted to more when I visit an antique shop.

I’m buried in stuff. Do you know that feeling? How do you manage yours? Do you do a clean-out from time to time? When I see something that I can’t resist I make a place for it—a new nail in the wall for a picture, a move-it-on-over spot for a new lamp. Dishes and candlesticks are a weakness—there is no more room!!

I was raised by a librarian—everything is kept, preferably Dewey Decimated. As a result I have my life history in file cabinets, desk drawers, dressers, chests, under the beds. What should be kept, what should go to a bonfire, what should be passed along to someone who can use it? If I don’t organize or get rid of it, who will? When the time comes, my sons and heirs may be so overwhelmed that most of it will go to a dumpster. So I’m working on my main 2012 resolution: if something comes into the house, something goes out. I’m trying to exercise the principle of “use it or lose it.” Oh how it hurts!

This gets me to another point: What do you want your heirs to know about you? There are things that you hope will get passed along to future generations—jewellery, photos, paintings—but there are some things that have meaning only to you. That ticket stub to the concert where you went with your first boyfriend, that heartbreaking letter from him when you broke up, the diary from your early teens, and other things even more personal—do you really want these preserved for all time?

You can leave stuff that may get passed on to future generations but what about the part of you that resides in your inner soul? Many of us have a genealogical record, but how many of us have an idea of what went on in the hearts and souls of those ancestors? Birthplaces and dates tell us little about their thoughts, values and philosophy.

I know that an ancestor of mine landed in PEI seven generations ago, but only because there is a written record and a monument in Malpeque. Historical documents tell us what life was like generally in the Scotland that they left, but I know nothing about their personal lives. I wonder if we were similar. Did she ever think, “What if I had stayed in Scotland?” like I sometimes think, “What if I had stayed in Montreal’? She must have written to her family back there about life over here and how she adjusted to it. Do those letters rest somewhere in Scotland with a descendant unknown to me? Did she keep a diary?

Have you written a journal that you can leave? A friend of mine left home in his late teens returning for a week or two from time to time. His mother died; his dad welcomed his brief visits. When his dad died he left a handwritten book about his history, his thoughts, his feeling for his children and more—all the things he either couldn’t express on the visits of his children, or things that he thought they wouldn’t understand until later. That diary still means much to my friend—it will be passed along to his sons accompanied by one of his own.

My father didn’t know his father—he had died when Dad and his sister were two and nine years old respectively. His scrapbook was discovered after my dad died but his older sister got to know her father through the printed word. There are poems, handwritten notes about various legal cases, clippings about friends and things of interest in the news. He had been an elected member of the New Brunswick government; at that time speeches in government were reported word for word in the newspaper. His were lengthy! It was a bitter surprise to my well-educated, independent auntie to learn that her father had been adamantly opposed to women having the vote!

She may have been a very different woman had he lived to see her through adulthood!

Your life has been interesting, but it will be even more interesting to your unborn generations. I don’t think that there is a recipe for writing a personal journal. A chronological record won’t be as interesting as a mishmash of thoughts about events and issues.

Sometimes I sit, pen in hand, and talk on paper to phantom friends, family, or just myself. My musings may not be of interest right now, but perhaps in three or four generations there will be another Katharine trying to find out about our similarities.

Now… do I start denuding my home of stuff or do I write? The quote is “the pen is mightier than the sword,” so I think I’ll side with the mighty. The stuff will wait for another year!