Letters from Appalachia: cleaning up, clearing out, and claiming a better way

Hello from Appalachia where, despite the fact it's February, the windows were open a few days ago. Off came the flannel and fleece. T-shirt time. Sun’s out, guns out.

Now, it’s cold, raining, and my phone says there’s a Winter Weather Advisory which makes sense, it being winter and everything. I suspect that the National Weather Service is looking out for the public welfare by sending a personal message directly to me that it’s too soon to see my guns. Think: belly of an old flabby bass. Among the many things that are best unseen this time of year.

Spring plays games with us here in Appalachia. She’s a moody teen in need of a nap. One minute she hugs you and gives you a loving peck on the cheek. Next minute and without warning, a cold draft smacks you on the face as the emotional rollercoaster stomps to her room and slams the door.

We know this, but we forget. We grumble. And we miss her when she’s gone.

It’s been about a month since we tossed Christmas to the curb. The freshly cut Fraser fir was nice and all, but I was glad to see it go, glad for the newly emptied corner in our on-the-small-side living room. This year, clearing out and cleaning up felt especially good. Curiously more than usual, good. A-fist-full-of-dark-chocolate-covered-coffee-beans-after-a-nap, good.

Needing another hit, I went to my office where I knew I’d find another chance to throw something out. An hour later, it wouldn’t have qualified for an Architectural Digest centerfold, but it was clean. And that felt good. Staggeringly good. You-get-a-big-refund-on-your-taxes, good.

And thus, a new obsession was born. It was as if someone flushed a cosmic toilet or opened the airplane door mid-flight. Stuff accumulated for years was being sucked out of the house, gone the way of the Christmas tree. Nothing was safe. Even the dog started giving me the side eye.

Next came the basement storage room, the ultimate test because that’s where I like to shove stuff and pretend it never happened. Elvis had his “Jungle Room.” I have my “Dungeon of Denial.”

What was in this basement storage room, you ask? Why…priceless family heirlooms, of course. Valuables far too precious to just throw away. That’s what I’ve told myself, anyway. My parents and grandparents and their parents and grandparents obviously had told themselves the same thing, and that’s why it was still in my basement.

Take for instance aunt so-and-so’s china that no one dared use because it was too “valuable.” News flash - it wasn’t, and it still isn’t. In fact, I’ve learned you can’t give that kind of stuff away because it’s not dishwasher safe, and in 2025, ain’t nobody got time for that. Crocheted doilies, souvenir plates from all 50 states, salt and pepper shakers in every conceivable iteration (‘cause you’ve never lived until you’ve seasoned your food with help from a ceramic toucan), and an explanation-defying collection of miniature porcelain schnauzers. What-not’s. Legions of them.

I too added to the piles over the years. The bike rack which I used only a few times before realizing riding bikes makes my rump ache. My 6th grade Tennessee history scrapbook. An embarrassing collection of Beanie Babies that, in 1996 were supposed to be worth a fortune one day (to which 2025 can only giggle). Boxes of unlabeled photos of people I sadly don’t recognize, and everyone who could recognize them is long gone. And the Mac-Daddy of them all - a glass punch bowl the size of a Prius, unused since my grandparents 50th anniversary party in 1989. Cups and matching ladle included! Want some punch? Need to bathe a small child?

This is just a small sampling.

A few months ago, I wouldn’t have had the courage to open the storage room door let alone clean the room out. Self-imposed intervention? I’ll pass. But thanks to the new obsession, I found myself craving a cleanse, even if it meant parting with lifetimes of leftovers.

The world’s most famous minimalist Marie Kondo said, “To truly cherish the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose. And if you no longer need them, then that is neither wasteful nor shameful.”

Hey Marie - why don’t you stay in your lane, ok?

I kind of don’t like her. And she’s brilliant and exactly right.

Real my age probably spend their free time buying new pickups, testing out the latest testosterone bio-hack, shooting deer, or taking their start-up tech companies public. The thrill of the hunt.

Me? I’ll be in the basement hauling out what-not’s, tingling with the thrill of the purge.

Back in my mid-20’s, a coworker who seemed old at the time but was probably younger than I am now told me that his definition of a great weekend was cleaning out his garage. Poor thing, I thought, convinced that such a drab fate would never fall to me. Now here I am in my 50’s fantasizing about bringing order to the kitchen spice rack.

But all this de-crapping of the house has made me wonder - am I being ungrateful? Isn’t complaining about having too much stuff the epitome of western modern spoiled brat privilege? What would my impoverished Appalachian ancestors say, the ones who farmed the land and worked in the factories, who made or grew almost everything they needed and begrudgingly bought the rest? They turned scraps of cloth into folk art. Worn out furniture got covered with those confounded doilies, a poor man’s reupholster job. That china I can’t give away? Purchased with hard-earned extra change collected in a jar until they had enough for one cherished place-setting at a time. An ancestor probably donated a vital organ to buy that punch bowl.

Can I spite my predecessors who, because they had so little, kept everything and threw away almost nothing? A friend once told me that when her Mamaw died, she found boxes of Cool Whip tubs among her things, tidily packed away for the eventual day when they’d surely be needed. They surely never were. My friend said she bawled while pitching the lovingly preserved trash in the trash. She knew her Mamaw didn’t think it was trash, so she wouldn’t be at all pleased to see it trashed. You’d be mad too if you’d eaten all that Cool Whip with nothing to show for it.

Old-timer Appalachians, especially the ones touched by the Great Depression, didn’t get rid of stuff, and that was a virtue. But every virtue has a dark side, and this one seems to have been an unrealistic estimation of an item’s value and an inability to give it a healthy goodbye when it was no longer wanted or needed. Fear of need caused them to cling, and like their tendency toward male pattern baldness and carrying their weight in the hips, I’m living proof that genetics are a thing. “There’s nothing new under heaven,” old King Solomon said. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Hey King Sol, meet Marie. How ‘bout you both stay in your lanes, ok?

I’m reminded of a lady who used to live in our neighborhood. I’ll call her Miss Velma. She and her husband worked for years “down at the plant” which around here means one of several manufacturing locations, almost all of which are now closed. One day as I drove by, I noticed Miss Velma dragging furniture into her front yard. Heavy stuff. No help. Miss Velma’s husband had died a while back. Her kids, to hear her tell it, “couldn’t pour pee outta their boots if there was directions on the heel.” So for their help, she hadn’t bothered to ask.

I put it in park.

“Well, Imma gittin’ it, I reckon,” she said when I asked if she needed help, which really was a dumb question now that I reflect on the situation.

“Having a yard sale or something?” I asked.

Her face winced like she’d eaten something sour. “Ah-HAYULL-naw!” she shot back, reminding me of something I’d forgotten - that Miss Velma loved to cuss, an affinity acquired during her years down at the plant. “I’m agittin’ rid of all this ****’in **** and I do mean ALL of it.”

A shameless, even triumphant grin.

“But Miss Velma - why? You moving or something?”

“LordgawdNO youngin’,” she said, clearly suspecting I wasn’t all that bright. “This ole’ place is just long overdue for a good cleanin’ out.” Miss Velma went on to explain that, while hauling in groceries, she spilled most of a jug of vinegar on her dining room carpet, and that led her to get out the scrubber and, no doubt, to cuss something fierce. “Worse than livin’ in a ****in’ pickle jar,” she bellowed.

When the scrubber didn’t work, things got real. Somehow, tiny Miss Velma went into Hulk mode and summoned the strength to pull back the wall-to-wall carpet in the dining room in hopes of airing out the padding, no doubt muttering words that would make locker room talk sound like a Joel Osteen sermon.

And that’s when she saw it - the golden, gleaming hardwood oak floor that had been covered with carpet in the 50’s or ‘60’s and hadn’t seen the light of day since. For Miss Velma, it was a revelation.

“Right then and right thar I made up my mind that that nasty*** rug was agoin’ to the dump.”

The toilet had been flushed. The airplane door - opened mid-flight. Miss Velma’s Christmas tree had been dragged to the curb, and everything else in the house would follow. Stuff she’d been given and collected and mindlessly kept for years was all of a sudden on its way into the yard. Best I could tell, that’s where her plan stopped. “Didn’t like most of it, and the rest smells like a ****’in ashtray,” she yelled as we dragged out her husband's recliner. Miss Velma had only recently given up cigarettes, so she could smell it for the first time in her life. As we dragged a recliner across the yard toward the street, I seemed to recall her late husband had passed away with a Camel in his mouth and oxygen tubes up his nostrils. Maybe in that very chair, but I hoped not.

We moved a loveseat, a bed, and a coffee table. We pulled her lighted curio cabinet out the door after emptying it of a collection of crying hobo clown figurines which also ended up in the front yard. Fitting.

Curtains. Afghans. Dishes. Even towels. All of it - out.

“But don’t you want to keep a few things?” I pleaded from time to time, concerned and thinking that maybe I should call her kids.

“Nossir,” she said. “Startin’ fresh. Here on out, if it’s in my house, gonna need it or gonna love it. Purriod”

An Appalachian Marie Kondo.

While I hauled, Miss Velma scribbled the words “Free - Come get it” on a piece of poster board and stapled it to an old campaign sign she’d found in the garage.

Word of anything free spreads fast in these parts. Before long, every yard-saler, antique dealer, and junk collector in the county descended on her street. The scraps that didn’t get grabbed soon got hauled to the city dump.

A few days later, a handyman removed the rest of the carpet and painted every wall in every room. “Simply White” was the name on the paint can. Miss Velma loved that.

When the dust settled, I paid another visit. Miss Velma welcomed me into her little house that, now, felt spacious inside. It felt clean. In the living room, one wooden chair sat near the TV. “I kep’em so I could watch m’ stories,” she said, because life doesn’t stop for “The Young and The Restless.”

“Glad you did it?” I asked, hoping she would say yes because, by that point, it was kind of too late. “Never been gladder!” she said, and with a smile to prove it.

Was it freedom I saw in her wrinkled face? Relief? She reminded me of someone who’d been on a long trip and finally got to drop their suitcases inside the front door. Unburdened. Finally at home.

And there, gleaming as bright as her smile, was that stunning oak floor, once-hidden strips of gold, now reflecting light and enticing you to enjoy its simple beauty. To think - it had been there for decades hiding out under layers of things that she no longer needed or wanted and actually really resented.

Miss Velma had plunged the shovel in the ground and found a new treasure, a vision of what life could be. She saw what she was missing, and that was all it took.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that everybody should get rid of everything in order to be happy. I guess what I’m saying is - maybe there’s something to be said for acknowledging, appreciating, and then parting with the things in life that don’t do you at least a little bit of good every day. The things that used to but don’t anymore. Relationships that hurt more than heal. Opinions - the hills you once would die on - that no longer seem worth the climb. The job that’s more convenient than meaningful. The worn out ways you deal with reality that, let’s be honest, deprive you and those around you of a whole lot of goodness and light and love.

Who knows - peeling away a few layers may reveal an unexpected golden treasure. It did for Miss Velma. I’m hoping it will for me.

Soon, spring will gather herself and come out of her room ready to change the world instead of just toying with it. She’ll send warm winds to wake us up and clear away winter’s remnants. She’ll cause bulbs to burst up and the trees to bud out. I’ll wear a t-shirt outside the house, and I won’t care what the National Weather Service has to say about it.

And just like that, we’ll all be free, unburdened of the accumulated layers. We’ll be just like Miss Velma - smiling from ear to ear, in awe of what we’d forgotten and was right there all along.