'Legacy List With Matt Paxton' helps former NBA player Jim Cleamons and family declutter

Former NBA player and coach Jim Cleamons had led a life full of moves — on and off the basketball court.  

The North Carolina native moved with his family to Columbus when he was in the third grade. He played collegiate basketball for legendary coach Fred Taylor at Ohio State University, was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers in 1971 (and was part of a championship team), played for other teams (including a stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers) and, when his playing career was over, had a multi-decade tenure as an NBA assistant coach, including with the Lakers and half-a-dozen other squads.

The stuff acquired by Cleamons along the way is the subject of the latest episode of the public television series “Legacy List With Matt Paxton” to air on WOSU-TV (Channel 34). 

Sorting through a lifetime of memorabilia

Last August, Paxton and his crew visited Cleamons, who, with his wife Cheryl, moved from Los Angeles to Columbus in 2019. The TV team sorted through the flotsam and jetsam amassed by the Cleamons family, which includes two grown daughters.  

“If you look at my bio, I’ve lived all over this country,” said Cleamons, 72, whose frequent job changes in the NBA had forced his family to move more than a dozen times over a span of 25 years. “I’ve lived from the East Coast to the West Coast, and from the Canadian border to Milwaukee and Chicago to Dallas, Texas.”

While going through the overstuffed garage of the Cleamons family’s home in East Columbus, Paxton and company unearthed several items of emotional value to the family — and found plenty of other things to donate to charity.

“I think we looked and saw how much I had accumulated,” said Cleamons, whose last coaching position was as an assistant with the New York Knicks.

“It’s always one of those things: ‘I’ll get to this later. I’ll do that when I have time,’” he said. “You look and say, ‘Wow. I should have taken plenty of time beforehand.’ It makes you aware of how much stuff that you do carry with you, and that you accumulate stuff just by living.” 

Deciding what's important

The point of the show isn’t just to get rid of stuff. Instead, Paxton asks families to create a “legacy list” — a list of important items around the house that are of the most emotional value — to help winnow out the things that don’t matter.

“There are millions of people who struggle with downsizing,” said Paxton, 46, of Atlanta, Georgia. “What I found is, if you pick those five or six items, those legacy items, ... then it’ll be easier for you to let go of all the little stuff that doesn’t matter. You’ve celebrated the five or six things that really, really matter to your family’s story.”

Paxton, who will be familiar to audiences from his appearances on the reality series “Hoarders,” first became interested in helping families clean up their living spaces when he was 24.

“That year, my dad, my stepdad and both my grandfathers all passed away,” he said. “I found myself in charge of cleaning out their houses, and it sucked. I was grieving, I was sad. I didn’t know what to do with all this stuff. I was getting all these memories from all these things I was finding.”

He added: “My grandpa always told me, ‘If something sucks, do it for a job, because people will pay you to do it.’ And here we are, 20 years later, still doing it.”

To help sort out what’s important and what isn’t, Paxton encourages everyone to create their own legacy list. He also suggests people write down the things they would remove from their home in the event of a fire.

“I’d pull out a stopwatch, ... and I’d hit start and go: ‘You’ve got two minutes. Go find them,’” Paxton said. “They could get one item, usually. It just really forced people to focus on what truly matters to (their) family, and it’s always something cool and interesting and emotional.”

Performing the '10-minute sweep'

In the case of the Cleamons family, Paxton and his team found a plethora of basketball memorabilia but also more personal items, such as a grandmother’s handmade quilt and a scrapbook of Jim Cleamons’ years at Ohio State.

The family didn’t hesitate about giving away things that were no longer of value to them, including about 30 or 40 of Jim Cleamons’ suits.

“They were really tall suits — they were extra-longs,” Paxton said. “That’s a need for a lot of these groups where men are reentering society and need nice clothes to go interview and get jobs.”

In the end, Paxton said, two full truckloads' worth of things — including furniture — were donated.

“They were ready to let go of almost everything,” he said. “When you move that much, you don’t really get attached to a whole lot of stuff.”

Said Cleamons: “Some of it, yes, you legitimately want, but do you actually need? That answer is no.”

For families wanting to downsize or declutter, Paxton suggests starting small. He said 10 minutes of dedicated decluttering per day can be a good start. Decide the important things to keep; decide what to give away to charity.

“I call it the 10-minute sweep,” he said. “If you don’t even know where to start, just clean the sink every night. Believe it or not, if you just clean the sink, that is a good way to get started.”

In the meantime, Cleamons is grateful for the head start the “Legacy List” gang gave to him and his family in their new home.

“I thank them for their time and their patience, because guess what?” Cleamons said. “We still have a lot to do.”

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At a glance 

The episode of “Legacy List With Matt Paxton,” featuring Jim and Cheryl Cleamons, will air at 7 p.m. Feb. 14 on WOSU-TV (Channel 34).