If you’ve been reading for a while you’ll know about my “not now boxes”. For those who haven’t, let me explain. Back in 2018 my partner died. I inherited what had essentially been his ‘family home’ from his late teens onwards. Clearing it meant not just dismantling the remnants of his life, but those of his mother’s and his step-dad’s lives because a lot of their stuff remained. The detail of that period has been described elsewhere; the relevance here is just the nature of what a 'not now box is and how we should deal with them. For me at that time, that there was some stuff that was easy to deal with, some stuff that was hard to deal with but nevertheless, really, something of a no-brainer, and then there was the I don’t know what to do with this stuff. Truly, seriously, at heart and soul level, I was conflicted by what would be the right thing to do.
My solution was to box it up and come back to it later – years later in some cases. I called those boxes “not now boxes”. They were things I knew I needed to deal with, but “not now”.
I continue to carry the 'not now' concept – and I recommend it - but I also need to distinguish it from prevarication or procrastination or avoidance. 'Not now' is none of those things. It is a reflective, conscious acceptance that there is a decision to be made, but that (for whatever reason) we are not in the right headspace to make it right now, BUT ALSO there is the commitment to make it in the near future.
Although I evolved both the concept and the process in the context of grief and the dismantling of the remnants of the lives of the departed, I am now clear that “not now boxes” don’t need to be house-clearance matters. They can be personal decluttering matters. They don’t even need to be physical boxes; they can be the thought-boxes that you stuff into your mental garage. The crucial thing about them is that you know, and you remember, and you fully intend to sort them out – just ‘not now’. They are NOT being buried. They are merely being put aside while you clear the relevant head-space.
There is no recommended timescale. I can’t tell you how long you will need before you face a not-now box. One recommendation though: don’t put them in the attic.
Put them somewhere you will go into often – maybe not everyday – but often enough that you do not lose sight of the boxes. Tripping over them occasionally helps, as does having to shift them to get at something else. Don’t put them on the top of wardrobes or in the back of cupboards that are rarely opened. Don’t spread them around the house. Take a corner of the garage, or the shed, or a little used spare room, and stack them up so they are tidy, but very visible. They need to be a little intrusive. They need not to be shouting at you, but still nudging you every now and again, that you did promise to do something about them.
Mine were in the garage and it took about four years. I say ‘about’ because this is an art and not a science. Also, as the “not now” becomes the “right now” we have to take a view. Make a decision. The question remains unchanged: what do I want to do with this?
As it happens a lot of my not now stuff was already (in my head) destined to be disposed of. The 'not now' part of it, was the 'how' part of it. It was stuff that I didn't want to bundle off to charity shops. The stuff I didn't know anyone who would really want it, but that I felt had some intrinsic value that meant "someone" would. Equally, there was the stuff that I didn't know whether I wanted to keep or not.
So a lot of what was in my ‘not now’ boxes was subsequently sold…some at a decent price, much at an obscenely low one…either way, the things have gone back into circulation to be loved or reworked or whatever. Doesn’t matter. Someone somewhere will either love them or make use of them.
Some was given away.
Some was donated to museums.
Some was ceremonially burnt.
Some was unceremonially put into the waste bin.
The whole point of 'not now' is to give yourself time and space to think: not just about the boxful of stuff, but about each individual item in it. There's another thing. A 'not now box' isn't about the box, it's about all the little or big things you've put in there and you can deal with them one at a time.
I still have boxes of books, but they are dwindling, because the books are still slowly selling. So although they’re still boxed up, they’re no longer ‘not now’ boxes. They’re ‘stock’. And yes, every so often I have a delve and take something out that I reckon will never sell at more than it’ll cost to send so I might as well give it away.
Then there is the one box that I consciously decided to keep. That one is in the attic, deliberately so. There I intend it to remain. There is a message in it addressed to whoever takes on the house after me. It tells some of the history of the house and of the people who have lived in it. I hope whoever finds it will be interested. I would really love it if they could decide to continue it by adding their own stories, but that part is out of my hands. I have left a note of what I would ask them to do with the stuff if they are not interested. On the back of one of my ‘small joy’ ideas, I even have something to add to it, and maybe that will continue during the time I remain here.
In that sense it is also no longer a “not now” box. Its future has been determined. It has become something more akin to an archive. A living archive, perhaps. A then, and now, and tomorrow box.
Meanwhile, I have just been introduced to someone else’s “not now box” – which sadly became a “not-ever box”.
And I mean ‘sadly’ in its most poignant sense. My cousin Craig, who died recently, was very close to his mother, especially after his father died. A few years ago, when he came to visit me, we were going through the old family photos that I have, and it came out that he did not have a picture of his mum and dad. I had a beautiful one, taken on their wedding day. Claire took it away, and had it framed as a present for him, and he loved it.
That is not the sad thing. The sad thing is that he actually had a whole load of pictures of his parents, and other family members, tucked away in a box on the top of a wardrobe.
Photographs, cards, diaries, documents, all neatly packed and safely kept, and put away out of sight and out of mind. That’s sad.
I believe we should be conscious of what we keep and why we keep it. I believe that we should take it out and handle it now and then…or at least look at it if it’s too fragile to stand much handling. Better yet, find ways of placing it where it can be seen. Even if we are the only ones who know why it matters.
This particular box is sad in another sense because it holds links to my own family history (as well as Craig’s) that are now completely lost. I can make intelligent guesses at some of those links and there are other family members still around who might be able to help, but there are many gaps. There are one or two answers to things we who remain have talked about, but every answer raises another question. Questions that now can never be answered.
It reminds me how lucky I was in loving to hear the family stories Mam & Dad told late at night. My loving to hear encouraged them to tell. Story-telling is at the core of humanity.
I cannot say for certain, but it might be the one thing that differentiates us from the other animals.
Maybe.
There is another side to this particular ‘memory box’ as Claire prefers to call it. And the truth is that it is more than a ‘not now / not ever’ box, more than a memory box, it too contains an archive. It contains items that go beyond mere family stories, things that touch on a wider story. There are fragile documents some 80-odd years old, that tell part of a story that I knew, but my brother didn’t – the story of our uncle's war. This isn’t the place (yet) to start telling that story, but part of my sadness is that however much of it I can piece together, I can’t help thinking there might have been more had I been able to talk to Craig about it.
He always said his father never talked about that time. I wonder. Maybe he did, but only in fragments. Maybe he did, but downplayed it. Maybe he did, but not to Craig and other people could have filled in some of the blanks. I wonder and I wonder and I wonder. And I will never know the whole of it, but I do now have leads to follow. I feel another project coming on!
I am SO sad, that my cousin did not know what a treasure he had on the top of a wardrobe – not a monetary one, but an emotional one, and one that links him back to his wider family who have already expressed an interest in “whatever” we find – a wider family who would have wanted to
reconnect with him in a way that I don’t think he ever understood, and maybe wouldn’t have wanted.
At the same time I am excited about what might be revealed. I am being drawn more and more into my own family’s story. It will be a while before I can come back to this particular project, but Craig – if you’re out there somewhere – I’m not sure whether to wish you’d sat down with me with all of this, or to be grateful that you forgot about it, so that it could be found now. I know that I am grateful that it was Claire who found it, and that you made sure we knew each other, and that as a result she knew how much this would mean to me.
To everyone else I say – tell your family stories to anyone in the family who will listen: your children, your nieces & nephews, your cousins, their partners, grand-children, someone somewhere will be
interested. I think this becomes more and more important. I have just had a quick glimpse into a box which will come into my possession later in the year, and it is full of hard copies. Paper. Ink. Leather. Card. Survivable and readable. Every record we create today will vanish in the deletion of a programme.
The more sophisticated our storage devices become, the more fragile and transient they are. The programmes change, storage & access methods change, everything we save today (to disk, to hard drive, to memory stick, to the cloud) will become unreadable in our lifetime. And so the ancient oral tradition is coming back into its own. Pass down your rituals and myths and legends – pass down your true stories – pass down the silliness, the jokes – pass down who was related to who and where they came from and what they did for a living.
Reinvent the ritual of storytelling.
That word of mouth may be the only record that remains.
And even if it isn’t, it might just spark a ‘wanting to know’ in the younger members of your family – and they have a right to know. It is their birthright to know who they are, where they came from, and how you feel about that.
