March 27 Entry — Are You Available This Week?

Last night, my mom texted to confirm our plans for the next day: she would come pick me up in the Red Car sometime between 10:15-10:30am. She will be coming from Rehoboth, MA, but heading first to TF Green to pick up my long time friend Sarah, who had just arrived from Orlando.

Ever since the sudden bridge closure, the convenience of traveling home has been tricker to maneuver. It can tack on another 20-30 minutes on the route to providence.

My mom arrived at 10:33am. I jumped into the car with my backpack and a few empty bags. Both of my parents had come down with earth shaking coughs. Mom handed me a mask, and I rolled down the window. Bill was blowing away at his harmonica. Since his Alzheimer’s diagnosis 5 years ago, Bill is more often than not a permanent passenger in the Red Car.

Sarah found us in the airport parking lot after we failed to find a place to pull over at Terminal C. And before we made our way back to Rehoboth, we stopped at Dave’s Market to pick up these special brand dumplings my mom found online to cook for Easter lunch. When we finally arrived at home and carried in the groceries, it was 12:30pm. I leaned against the kitchen counter while I ate a turkey sandwich with Sarah. Then, she went to take a multi-hour nap. I took off with the Red Car to pursue my thesis project at 1:20pm.

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I’ve known for a few years that Auntie Martha’s house, like my own, was also on a decluttering journey. It just so happened that my thesis process and her personal goals aligned. She has lived alone in a 2 story house in Swansea ever since my uncle Buddy passed away in 2015. Growing older, she and my mom aspire to sell their houses and build a compound together.

Forewarned that Aunt Martha was recovering from COVID, I donned another mask and entered her basement to explore Buddy’s woodshop. To avoid any exposure, we had worked out a system that moved all communications to no-contact, texting threads.

Dormant for about 6 years, all his things were as he left them. Martha explained that she was struggling to parse through everything since she didn’t know what was worth keeping or sending to GotJunk. Seeing the room, I could see why. Buddy was a serious carpenter; he had meticulously organized and displayed his tools and their duplicates. Save for the rusted and expired items, many of these tools had legitimate monetary value and reuse potential.

As I did a first pass over the room, I bagged obviously salvageable tools like tape measures, clamps, sandpaper, saws, and wrenches. Then, I started to more carefully poke around at the clutter. After a while, I noticed that I was unconsciously sorting in a way that relocated the unusable items to separate containers, clearing surfaces and categorizing items based on usability, subsequently leaving behind the hidden things like velcro straps, antique hinges, zinc pins, loose drill bits, nuts and bolts, and screws. I started to embrace the decluttering process as both a material sourcing opportunity but inherently as an act of service for someone who felt weighed down by stuff.

Before long, it was 4pm and time to zip back to RISD because I had scheduled all my Resident Advisor duty nights for Spring Break week. That meant my butt had to be planted on campus from 7pm-8am to answer any emergency calls.

Following the iPhone map directions, we took a roundabout route to Providence which landed us at the BEB at 5:30pm.

LILY GUCFA, RISD ARCHITECTURE DEPARTMENT, SPRING 2024