It's time to bring in the dumpster

The attic of the garage awaits.

A couple of weeks back, Connie and I made a trek west to Illinois to her hometown.

Her oldest brother has reached the point in life when it’s time for him to make the transition to assisted living.

Trouble is, the brother — let’s call him Charley — has a lot of stuff.

Now, admittedly, all of us of a certain age have a lot of stuff.

The late great George Carlin used to do a stand-up bit about “stuff,” the accumulated material objects, junk, detritus, recyclables and valued belongings that each of us tends to carry around like those chains Jacob Marley dragged along in “A Christmas Carol.”

Stuff is a burden. And it’s hard to get rid of.

Just ask Charley.

Every little decision seems to add more and more stuff.

When Connie’s parents died, Charley inherited the family house in Illinois.

And it was full of stuff.

There were papers and paintings, books and bric-a-brac, report cards and tax returns, old clothes and old postcards.

Faced with the enormity of it all, Connie and her siblings decided at the time that the best course of action was to box things up, label them and come back later. That might have worked except for one thing: Charley had more stuff.

After he moved into the family house and his siblings went back to Indiana and North Carolina and Arizona and New York, he had more stuff shipped in.

Charley had lived in Philadelphia and had inherited mountains of stuff from his late wife’s parents. Then he lived in western Pennsylvania for a while and accumulated more.

Eventually, it all made its way back to that family house in Illinois.

By any measure, that should have been enough.

But while he was living in the house, Charley started to accumulate more: Stereo equipment, electronic pieces of unknown origin or use, unopened liquor bottles that guests had brought to parties and well over 1,000 LP record albums.

Eventually, Charley moved out of the house. But the stuff remained.

To say that down-sizing was in order would be a tremendous understatement.

So it was that Connie’s younger brother and sister gathered to try to make sense of it all. After they’d put in a tough week of work, we joined them.

A trailer was filled to haul to recycling and the landfill. At least four, perhaps five, trips were made to Goodwill. The college where Connie’s father had taught English literature sent a team over to cherry-pick his library and gather things for the college archives.

And those of us who already have too much stuff took some of the stuff home.

For our part, it was mostly a selection of more of Connie’s mother’s paintings — she was an art teacher and a talented watercolorist — and other things that our daughters had expressed an interest in.

Did we get the job finished? No.

Another session of work is planned for this fall. But the house has gone from daunting to manageable, thanks to the work put in this month.

And all that brings me back to the attic of our garage.

While its contents are not on Charley’s scale, there is certainly way too much stuff, way too much crap, up there.

Some of it isn’t even really ours.

When we took possession of our house 40 years ago this summer, the family selling it threw up their hands when it came to the attic of the garage. They’d cleared out the house, but they were exhausted and knew junk when they saw it.

So it’s still there, along with 40 years of other stuff: Bicycles that haven’t been ridden in years, broken camping equipment, old posters, miscellaneous furniture and more.

To make things even more interesting, the stairs to the attic are a little iffy, at least for my 72-year-old knees.

So the task awaits. But, thanks to Charley, we know it has to be done.

Watch for a dumpster in our driveway sometime this summer.