Stories of Stuff

Like most people, I have seasons of accumulation and seasons of divestment. Sometimes, it's even at the same time, I'm chucking and acquiring all at once, in different categories. 

In my fifties, I desperately wanted to renovate my basement, but the huge barrier was getting rid of all of the stuff that had accumulated there, from my several moves and my mother's big downsizing into an apartment. I worked away at it, and finally declared defeat and hired someone to finish the job. "Just get rid of it, and keep it out of the landfill" I said. By then, I had picked through it, and successfully disposed of most items of value. But some stuff I wasn't prepared to sort or part with, and so it all went into boxes to be stored in a shed in the back yard until the renovation was complete. Then, when my beautiful basement was complete, I sorted before allowing anything back in. Much stuff was gotten rid of. The basement was furnished, but uncluttered.

Then, my mother died.  Not tragically, at 92 she was just beginning to fail, but suddenly, and unexpected at that particular time. Among the tasks that fell to me was the cleaning out of her apartment. 

I was pretty organized back when I started in the storage unit

"Gosh, she has a lot of nice stuff! I mean, it's really nice, but it's a lot!" was the universal comment that came from everyone that came in to help. Yes, yes it was. I had embraced the philosophy of minimalism (though not entirely the practices, in fairness). All this very nice stuff. What to do with it?  I wrote about the struggles at the time.

I'm now down to the last remaining items in the storage unit I rented. To get it cleared out, I brought several boxes home, where they are cluttering up my office and spare bedroom. I'm done with most of the sentimentality that made me want to hang on to things. But, I do have sadness for the stories that attach to the objects. I had an idea years ago - about the time I retired, before my mother died, of using a blog as the place to capture the stuff and tell the stories. I even started the documentation when I retired. I had a big box of awards I had gotten at work, and I was never going to hang them up on the wall at home. So I photographed them, and blogged about them, in a separate blog. But I never published it, and shortly after, overwhelm hit me and I never got back to it.

But now I have picked it up again. I have some objects I am going to dispose of, and the blog posts are partly advertisements! Other things, I'll just write about without trying to flog them off on anyone. They may be gone already, anyway.

So, take a look at my Stories of Stuff blog.