DEMENTIA CARE: CLUTTER MUST GO.

Where, though? Every item is a memory. Things pile up. Hallways narrow. Navigating my way through the house turns into a negotiation with a shrinking enemy called SPACE. The tinier this enemy becomes, the more frantic are the diplomatic moves.
   What goes on the pile of things that must leave in a hurry? Old clothes. First, buy some new clothes. See if they fit. They do. Note if they are comfortable. They are. Buying clothes for someone under your care is a seasonal game…
   The rules are simple. As the seasons change, make sure you have enough clothes on standby for the season you are leaving behind – it’s easier to harvest clothes that are readily available. When clothes fall apart, immediately replace them.
   Some of those winter jumpers looked tired and worn. One old reliable garment took a slash to it. Should I attempt a repair?
   No.
   I engaged in an evaluation of all the winter jumpers. The clocks go forward. It’s still cold. Buy in a whole new bunch of jumpers now. They are just barely still on the racks.
   Well, that’s what I did. They were lovely and fresh and soft. As each new jumper joined the daily roster, I removed an ancient favourite.
   There’s always the option of recycling stuff to charity. Been there, done that, and given away the T-shirt. But some things are on the border between using again and ditching. Mostly, the stuff that went to charity was stuff that didn’t quite fit or was a bit rough on the sensitive skin.
   Another rule. Try new clothes. Anything that’s useless won’t go back to the shop. It’ll wait there as back-up clothing, just in case. When a charity envelope drops through the letterbox, a bag of clothes marches out the door.
   Boxes go, too. Here’s a gadget. It came in that box. The gadget is out of guarantee. If the gadget breaks down, time for a replacement. In the meanwhile, that box can go. The paper and cardboard recycling bin almost burst from the scraps I’ve been dropping in there.
   Those bins are on a three-week cycle. If I race to replace worn-out goods, I win a bonus prize of ALL the cardboard packaging. The paper recycling bin was brimming over last time, and it’ll be brimming over next time as well. Oh, for the days when the paper bin is half-full when it has to go out into the street for emptying.
   Tonight I stared at documents. The care team comes in twice a day. Carers must leave a trace of their passing. They fill out a statement of what was done, and note anything that needs keeping an eye on. But at the distance of more than a year, those statements – which no one else reads – why, those statements only show me a record of someone’s decline. There’s never a mention of the sing-a-longs, the laughter, the chattiness, or the care team having a dance. I just see a new problem develop and we add it to the list.
   Earlier in the caring process there’s a mention of assisting in walking upstairs to the bathroom for a shower in the chair inside the bath. Loss of mobility is, therefore, documented on a daily basis across one week. The week of changes.
   While that would be useful to me as a document – for reconstructing the whole saga – it’s just pretty fucking grim. So I shredded a bunch of old pages that were taking up space. Then I marched to the bin in the garden and, in light rain, hardly rain at all, really, I made sure the wind didn’t get at the cross-cut fragments.
   Clutter. There’s a box full of documents that I’ll have to consider shredding next. File by file, crate by crate, box by packed box, I am dismantling the history of caring routine…and I make more room. Is that a fair trade? It is. Now I have room for the new improved caring routine.
   I must plan for storms. Recently it was…what’s the phrase?
   Windy as fuck.
   Bulky items must go. Some of them aren’t that hefty. They take up space, but not weight. I’ve finally ejected those things from the house. The last gasp of a winter storm blew a plant pot out of the back garden and someone else’s plant pot into the front garden.
   I also had to put an inflatable balloon animal out of its misery. Just look at the widdle wabbit…going into the bin. With that bluster out of the way and a clear gap in Atlantic Skulduggery, the coast was clear to put larger items out into the street for disposal.
   One of those large items was a lightweight item. If I’d put that out during the stormy weather, it would have flown its sharp edges through someone’s window.
   In winter, you learn all about the unsecured trampolines belonging to other people.
   I checked the weather satellite map for storms. There was a gap. We were good to go into the street and as far as the van that picks this stuff up. I’ve gone from navigating through the front hall and the kitchen to walking in and out of those places. It’s a miracle.
   What has to go? I don’t think there’s an original piece of kitchen equipment left from the time before being a carer. Except, possible, a few pieces of cutlery. Cutlery has to be really badly worn to face replacement. And I recall ditching a WORLD of tablespoons as I took up caring duties.
   When the kitchen was replaced last year, okay, yes, there was an ancient teaspoon unearthed from behind an old unit. Can’t happen again. The units are built flush against the wall and are tiled in place. Anyway, that old spoon had to go to the metal recycling bin.
   Was a single spoon really clutter? Yes. Firstly, I’d have to decontaminate the damned thing. Secondly, I’d need to keep it in its own compartment in the kitchen drawer. Easier to recycle. It’s part of a hubcap, now. Most likely.
   And so. After a loud bang and a quick check in rainy weather, I can confirm that the bulky items are gone. They didn’t roll out into the road. I packed them against the garden fence with fiendish precision. One item holds another item in place. All items are on this side of the gate and not the far side of the gate. That’s where the pavement was lowered to accommodate a car parking in the garden.
   There’s no car. So the helpful arrangement of a slanted pavement just makes it harder to throw things out. They really would be thrown out into the road. And I could see that being some random driver’s problem. Best not to arrange things that way.
   The wind didn’t blow the lighter item anywhere. I checked late at night when I secured the last piece, and I slept the sleep of the just. Then I checked in the morning. All was well. Everything I’d piled up merely obstructed the pavement. There was no way around that.
   Okay, you could walk into the road. I guess there was a way around, after all.
   Next? More of the same. I will amass bulky items to go, in reasonable doses of large objects. Gradually I will clear our portions of the loft. Then I can use the space there to store more stuff in. Once again, I’ll do the rounds and pick out cardboard boxes for recycling purposes.
   They are recycled by means of the knife and the document shredder. When cardboard piles up, it goes into that handy cardboard reserve. Once the last indoor bin is full, I realise four more parcels are on the way. And I play cardboard roulette with the recycling day.
   Plastic goes to recycling. Paper goes to recycling. Metal goes to recycling. Some clothes go to charity. Other clothes are done, and I wrap those around awkward items that are difficult to dispose of. Sharp objects. Things destined for the dump.
   Food waste, of which there is little, goes in the garden bin. Occasionally I buy in eggs. It’s the shells that fly to the garden bin. There’s no waste of food. Everything’s eaten. What does that leave? I have a small nuclear pile of used batteries which must go to a pharmacy. Pharmacies take those. I’m saving the batteries up for one reasonable ditching.
   Why is clutter a problem? Carer equipment. You have to make more and more room for it. And still live your own life. Towel rails weren’t a thing, before being a carer. Now there are mobility rails with towels on them. And the kitchen has rails and hooks for ALL the towels.
   Towels I’ve recently replaced. More towels upstairs, to make full use of door-mounted rails. Fewer towels downstairs, to make it easier on the overcrowded rails there. Sometimes eliminating clutter means simply moving clutter around so that it averages out.
   Which reminds me. The front hall may be clear once more, but the upstairs hall has a temporary cardboard box problem once more. I can’t wait for that next recycling day, even though the last one is only just barely behind me. Business as usual, for a carer.