\n<\/p>\n
I feel the urge to keep anything\u2013and everything\u2013my mother gives me. Hell, I keep her grocery lists, which she scrawls on notecards (tuna, lettuce, coconut water) and signs with a signature lipstick blot. But her old clothes are the real problem: Consignment store sweaters full of moth holes. A pair of Harley Davidson leather boots that gnawed the backs of my ankles the last time I wore them 10 years ago. The hardcore ankle boots are now dehydrated and crumpled. All of it marinates in the back of my closet.<\/p>\n
I bring this up on the eve of Mother\u2019s Day<\/a>, but this hoarding syndrome doesn\u2019t solely apply to mom castoffs. It can happen with anyone we\u2019re related to or with whom we feel close. Who hasn\u2019t received a sweater that they\u2019ll never wear? We stuff it in a drawer and forget about it until the giver asks why we haven\u2019t worn it. The guilt swells and swells while the sweater sits and sits. It\u2019s a vicious circle. Retail or hand-me-down, these unwanted gifts take up not just physical but emotional space as well.<\/p>\n Being a good (neurotic) daughter, I contacted a professional for help. Psychologist Carolyn Mair, the author of The Psychology of Fashion<\/em>, told me that our guilt in these situations doesn\u2019t necessarily have to do with whether we like a gifted garment, but what it signifies. \u201cWhen a mother passes something down, she\u2019s offering more than fabric; she\u2019s offering continuity, a tangible link between her identity and yours,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s why refusal can feel emotionally loaded and hurtful to her, and why discarding it later can stir a daughter or son\u2019s guilt that feels out of proportion.\u201d<\/p>\n When we say au revoir<\/em> to those three pashminas our mom threw at us the last time we were home, are we telling her that we don\u2019t care about her? I buzzed my fashion fairy godmother from across the pond, fellow writer Plum Sykes<\/a>, who is the mother of two teenage girls, to get her opinion. Sykes (who is definitively not the real Emily<\/a>) recounted a harrowing story of trying to dump some Nina Ricci<\/a> on her university-aged child. \u201cChiffon dress, pale cream, absolutely beautiful. And I said to Ursula on Sunday, \u2018Usy, do you want to take this back to Paris with you to art school?\u201d She said she needed a summer dress. And she went, \u2018It\u2019s a bit Y2K, mom.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Quelle horreur!<\/em> Was Sykes hurt by her daughter\u2019s Ricci-rejection? \u201cWell, I don\u2019t want the bloody Y2K thing either, which is why I\u2019m trying to get rid of it!\u201d Plum didn\u2019t like the item anyway, and it just so happened that her daughter was the closest thing to a charity shop.<\/p>\n My friend, the writer Nicolaia Rips, has a name for this phenomenon; she calls the daughter-deposit move a \u201csoft trashcan.\u201d Little did Plum know that merely offering her early \u201900s chiffon could leave a lasting mark on teenage Urusla. \u201cThese items take on symbolic weight, becoming vessels for memory and attachment. This is psychological essentialism,\u201d says Mair. \u201cWhat makes it irreplaceable is the essence: the fact that the item was worn by the mother. This matters more than the item itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Dear readers, this situation calls for a bit of boundary-setting; it\u2019s time to learn the art of refusal. First, understand where the beloved person\u2019s offloading is coming from. Is the gift a crocheted scarf made by your great-grandmother, the yarn sourced from a goat she raised herself, then smuggled out of the old country, and passed down through the family for decades? Or is it a sack of ripped and torn J. Brand jeans that your mom simply doesn\u2019t want to give to Goodwill? It is up to you to decipher the matriarchal \u201cdump.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n