Often when people are getting ready to put a house on the market for sale and move they realize they have LOTS of stuff that they need to sort through and get rid of - and for many people this is really, really hard!
Well, my sister and I have just spent the second of two days sorting through boxes in our dad's basement to try to help him get a handle on what he might want, what someone in the family might want - and what needed to just go! Now all of these boxes have been in his basement since my mom died in 1995 - and many of them have been stored in boxes since they moved out here from Illinois in the early 80's. So, by my husband's logic, if they have been in the boxes that long and nobody has needed them, they really all should just be disposed of without opening. He is obviously not the son of a packrat - but I find this type of sorting to be really agonizing.
We got about 80% of the boxes sorted into piles for me, my sister, our brother, Goodwill or such, the garbage or recycle can - and then loaded the remaining boxes into our cars to take home and finish going through. These remaining boxes were primarily family photos, books, some things of possible value to sell on eBay - or that we just were too exhausted to deal with at the time.
The books are probably the easiest as we each found a few we wanted to read or re-read, and agreed that once we each have looked thru and picked out good ones, then the rest were headed to our respective libraries to donate. Within the book boxes though are some cookbooks - actually lots of cookbooks, and this presented the first challenge. Now mind you I have more cookbooks than I actually use already, but some of the ones in the box are collections of recipes from my parents' church or local groups my mom belonged to, and so many of the recipes are from women I remember as friends of my mom. Can I part with those? Who knew I was so sentimental? (Besides my husband that is).
Then there are boxes of old 78 record albums that were mostly ones belonging to one of our grandmothers (the very modern one who moved from the midwest to Phoenix, Arizona all by herself when she was widowed in her 50's and spent much of the rest of her life traveling the world and surprising us with postcards from all over). I don't think any of us kids really want the records (for one thing, none of us has a turntable to play them on!), but several are autographed to my grandma - can we part with those?
Hardest of all, to nobody's surprise probably, is the family photos. Easiest to deal with are the ones that are all of one family or another of me, my sister, and brother. But how to divide up the ones that have members of various of our families, or other relatives - and then there are lots of photos of mom and dad on all the trips they took. And of course, some that are likely great or great-great grandparents (or at least appear to be relatives of that era) - only trouble is they are not marked and none of the family seem to know who they might be. Do you keep random photos of strangers? What if they might be relatives?
At the moment, our strategy is to mark any photos we want copies of from the group that might appeal to two or all three of us and then see where we are at. It has occurred to me to just arrange some together and take a photo of the photos, too - might be a plan.
We did also find all of the old letters us kids had written to grandparents as children, letters written by mom and dad when they were kids, old Christmas cards, newspaper clippings, etc. I'm amazed at the things mom kept, and a little sad at the thought that hand written letters and even cards are becoming such things of the past that I guess the next several generations won't have boxes like this to find in the basement.
So, yes, I am the daughter of a packrat - and I totally understand the urge to keep these mementos of family and loved ones. I'm working on my strategies to let go of the "things" though, realizing that my memories are strong enough to carry me along.
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