Stuff

[gamewell45]

Since my wife and I are planning on moving within the next 2 years or so, we've begun a program of tossing anything we don't need. Just last year we brought in four 12 yard dumpsters and emptied out the barn. Never knew i had so much crap. In a few weeks we'll be bringing another dumpster and begin cleaning out the basement. That represents 30 years of junk and furniture we never threw out but instead stored. 99% of the stuff we haven't used in the past 25 years.

[jimmyz]

When mom died so unexpectly my sisters and i had to go through all my parents stuff so we could put the house for sale. Now, we knew it was going a huge, sad undertaking but we werent at all prepared to find some of the " stuff" they kept all these years. All four of us did lots of crying that week. It's not the usual things that you know you are going to find stashed around...it's the little things that we found that was the hardest to see. (I am tearing up even while typing this out. )

One thing that i found stashed in the very bottom of her jewelry box literally knocked me to floor crying even harder. I had it cupped in my hand and my other hand on top so I didnt drop and lose any of its contents. My sisters all came over around me asking what was wrong, what i found. I couldnt even answer because i was crying so hard. I just held my hands out and lifted my top hand. All three of them did what i did. Sat and cried passing it around. What was so precious and dear to my mom in that little box? It was 4 tiny little baggies like jewelers use. There was one for each of us with our names on them. Inside each one were our first lost baby teeth. It was already late at night by then thankfully....because we werent going to get anything else done. All four of us sat there crying and talking and just hugging each other....horribly lost and sad but grateful that we had each other. We sat there for hours reminiscing about the fun times we had going on the various roadtrips and vacations. That was the first time in the time span since we felt mom's last heartbeat that I realized that it is okay to laugh and smile when talking about mom. She wouldnt want us to only feel sadness or guilt thinking or talking about her. My mom loved to smile and laugh...even at herself. My best friend since we were in the 6th grade made the 8 hour drive to mom's funeral service. In the "memory book" we had out for everyone to sign and leave little notes about mom Debbie wrote, "We will miss that radiant smile down here but Heaven just brighter because of it."
Mom's birthday was last Wednesday. I bought some yellow roses (her favorite) and drove to where i did her ashes and one by one watched them drift out to the sea on the waves. Oh, how she loved going there! She and daddy would spend hours there sitting in the boat and fishing. My mom's last painting she did was a depiction of her and daddy in the boat at sunset. She titled it, "Our Kind of Heaven." It really was, too.

Sorry yall. Sometimes one little memory causes dozens more.

I have my kids baby teeth and the beanies they wore as newborns with their first haircut clippings and newborn wristbands that I intend on being framed and given to them.

[Standing Wolf]

When mom died so unexpectly my sisters and i had to go through all my parents stuff so we could put the house for sale. Now, we knew it was going a huge, sad undertaking but we werent at all prepared to find some of the " stuff" they kept all these years. All four of us did lots of crying that week. It's not the usual things that you know you are going to find stashed around...it's the little things that we found that was the hardest to see. (I am tearing up even while typing this out. )

One thing that i found stashed in the very bottom of her jewelry box literally knocked me to floor crying even harder. I had it cupped in my hand and my other hand on top so I didnt drop and lose any of its contents. My sisters all came over around me asking what was wrong, what i found. I couldnt even answer because i was crying so hard. I just held my hands out and lifted my top hand. All three of them did what i did. Sat and cried passing it around. What was so precious and dear to my mom in that little box? It was 4 tiny little baggies like jewelers use. There was one for each of us with our names on them. Inside each one were our first lost baby teeth. It was already late at night by then thankfully....because we werent going to get anything else done. All four of us sat there crying and talking and just hugging each other....horribly lost and sad but grateful that we had each other. We sat there for hours reminiscing about the fun times we had going on the various roadtrips and vacations. That was the first time in the time span since we felt mom's last heartbeat that I realized that it is okay to laugh and smile when talking about mom. She wouldnt want us to only feel sadness or guilt thinking or talking about her. My mom loved to smile and laugh...even at herself. My best friend since we were in the 6th grade made the 8 hour drive to mom's funeral service. In the "memory book" we had out for everyone to sign and leave little notes about mom Debbie wrote, "We will miss that radiant smile down here but Heaven just brighter because of it."
Mom's birthday was last Wednesday. I bought some yellow roses (her favorite) and drove to where i did her ashes and one by one watched them drift out to the sea on the waves. Oh, how she loved going there! She and daddy would spend hours there sitting in the boat and fishing. My mom's last painting she did was a depiction of her and daddy in the boat at sunset. She titled it, "Our Kind of Heaven." It really was, too.

Sorry yall. Sometimes one little memory causes dozens more.

When my mother died some years ago, I went back to Indiana to help my sister settle her affairs. My sister was busy with work, so it fell to me to clean out my folks' big Dutch Colonial house, where they'd lived since the late '60s. The house was always neat and well organized, so I thought it was going to go quickly - a breeze. I was quite wrong. As I began opening cabinets, drawers and closets, the enormity of the job began to make itself evident. A room that I thought was going to take me a few hours to clean out would end up taking a day and a half.

In the master bathroom closets I found my mother's stash of hotel soaps, sewing kits and those little bottles of shampoo and conditioner - large shopping bags filled with them. My father had been an airline pilot, so they travelled a lot and apparently my mother collected those things from all the hotel rooms they'd ever stayed in, but hardly ever used any of it. Most of the shampoos and that sort of thing were so old they'd turned into powder. I filled a good-sized box with little sewing kits alone, to donate somewhere. (Now when I can't find a needle and thread, I sort of wish I'd kept that box.)

I found hundreds and hundreds of jigsaw puzzles - each of which she'd put together exactly once and then put in the attic. In my father's den closet, I discovered that he'd apparently kept every cancelled check the bank had ever sent back to him. (Younger members may not be aware that banks used to routinely do that.) I mean, there were checks he wrote in the early '50s. For health reasons, my father had not been able to drink for the last ten years or so of his life, but he'd never done anything with his large and very well stocked liquor cabinet. It took me a week and a half to finish all the sorting and clearing out, and a bottle of good brandy from that cabinet made the job a bit more pleasant and made it easier to sleep in that big, empty house.

Two big semi trucks came to pick up the furniture and everything else that I hadn't set aside to keep, and then I gave the place a last going-through to tidy up somewhat - the professional cleaners would come later - and then it was the last night and I was going to drive away for the last time. I stood down in the basement in the dark and felt all the ghostly memories of our family life in that house thick in the air. I decided then and there that I would leave as much of the anger and drama as I could behind me in that house, make peace with the ghosts and just move on.

I picked up a little porcelain frog with an open mouth that was obviously intended to be an ashtray, but which had never been used as one. My mother smoked Kool cigarettes constantly, but she also loved animals...and I could just imagine her buying the ashtray but then being unable to bring herself to use it for one. There was a small Amish hex sign nailed up on the front porch, which I took with me as I left and put it up on my sister's house.

Every once in a while, I think about something that I neglected to get from the house - some object that I either saw and just forgot to pick up, or which I know my folks kept and I just ran out of energy to look for. By a weird coincidence, I just happened to do a search on my last name on EBay a couple of weeks after this, and saw my father's high school letterman's jacket, which it cost me about sixty bucks to get back. I tell myself, "You can't keep everything." I probably have more keepsakes and family heirlooms than most people do, so I guess I should count my blessings.

[silvereyes]

I have my kids baby teeth and the beanies they wore as newborns with their first haircut clippings and newborn wristbands that I intend on being framed and given to them.

Awww. Trust me on this: they will think youre something pretty special. And that you love them so muc..... that you couldnt part with even a tiny piece of them.

[DGUtley]

As I've gotten older, I have been getting rid of stuff. Life is simpler that way. I'm a lawyer, why did I have 4 circular saws?

[Standing Wolf]

As I've gotten older, I have been getting rid of stuff. Life is simpler that way. I'm a lawyer, why did I have 4 circular saws?

Good question. Of course even lawyers are entitled to have outside interests, hobbies, collections, etc. As others have said, though, if you never, ever use something - and I would add, if it has no serious emotional or sentimental value - why is it taking up space in your house?

Actually, sorting out my late parents' house - and later, my grandfather's - has changed my thinking about "stuff" to some degree. Now I look around at some of the stuff I've let accumulate and I think, "What would my wife and kids do with that if I dropped dead tomorrow?" I wouldn't want to put my family through the mental (not to mention physical) trial of having to go through a lot of crap that I was just too lazy or unmotivated to dispose of during my lifetime.

[silvereyes]

It's only 1,600, I'll have you know.

Mike Whiteside, co-owner of Black Dog Salvage in Roanoke, featured on Salvage Dawgs, once said, "I'm not a hoarder. I'm a Resources Manager." Thinking about having that put on a t-shirt.

Do you really? O.o

[silvereyes]

As I've gotten older, I have been getting rid of stuff. Life is simpler that way. I'm a lawyer, why did I have 4 circular saws?

Omg. You and my parents!!!
In the garage daddy had 4 of those big shelves you put together. Id walk out there determined to get it in one day. So, i went to the first shelf closest to me. Remember---i...was...determined!!!
After the 87th time i asked myself "well, $#@!. "Where in the $#@! am i going to put all this $#@!? You can do it! Get-r-done." One thing out there shook me to my core. On the top shelt in a clear plastic tub was my daddy's slide rule. I had saved up all my allowance money to take with me to the zoo so i could buy some zoo trinkets...but what i ended up doing with it was to buy my daddy that slide rule that i found at a flea market we stopped at. I knew he needed a new one because my sister and I broke his playing our pirate game. We used his slide rule as a pirate sword.....ya cant be a pirate without a swashbuckling sword!!! Everyone knows that! So, in our zeal for pirating we broke it. I was about 8-9. So i bought him that fancy slide rule...leather case and all. He loved it...so much so that i found it pristine and immaculate about 40 years later. I digress...sorry. So back to Operation sort and clean i went. On his shelf by me i found 8 glue guns, 9 heavy duty staplers, and (omg) a bazillion bungy cords and zip ties. When i discovered yet another oddity in daddy's cave i thought, "wtf??? Why??? $#@! this. My sisters can sort through this $#@!." Daddy had a box way towards the wall with the words, "open at your own risk....i trapped a mouse in here....it might not be dead." My morbid curiousity could NOT resist....i had to see wtf this was all about. So i put it on the ground and grabbed a rake and i used it from about 4 feet away. Flipped that lid off and hid behind moms car. (I said i was curious...not brave. Lol Nothing ran out. I eased over there a looked in the box. It was filled quite well..with candy...and on the top of the moldy candy hill there was the skeleton of a mouse. I screamed and high-tailed inside..��

[Tahuyaman]

As I've gotten older, I have been getting rid of stuff. Life is simpler that way. I'm a lawyer, why did I have 4 circular saws?

well, you know what they say...... You can't have too many circular saws.


There is one thing I refuse to get rid of. I have every waterski I have ever purchased in my life. I have about 25 waterskis.

[Lummy]

I'm getting rid of a lot of stuff lately. Some stuff I haul out to the street and put a Free sign on it. Someone always takes it.

I make a dump run about twice a month for the stuff I think isn't worth anything. I take a lot of stuff to Goodwill. If I have a tool which I haven't used in a year, I take it to Goodwill. Unless it has an engine on it like an old lawn mower or roto tiller. In that case I put the Free sign on it.


At any rate, I'm clearing up a lot of room in my basement and shed by getting rid of stuff I don't need any more.

May I suggest you take stuff anywhere but Goodwill. Goodwill is one money-making nonprofit, and their prices are often not Good. Goodwill has big corporate offices all over the place. They are way over the top.

There are alternatives. Veterans have worthwhile used goods stores as do Catholics and other churches.

Just a suggestion, of course, but I don't use Goodwill. It flaunts too much money, IMHO.