On the fourth of July, I woke up at three in the morning, and proceeded to spend the entire day traveling from California to Windham, Maine. Yep, I sure know how to enjoy a good holiday. I'm here to help my Grandpa pack up his house, since he's planning to move in a few months. My Grandma, who can be lovingly referred to as a pack rat of alarming proportions, died a few years ago, leaving him with a large house filled to the brim with stuff. It's a two-story, four bedroom house with many closets, an enormous craft room, four rooms worth of garage in the basement, and an additional large shed with an attic on top of that.
At this point, you may be thinking, "Wow that would be a lot of stuff, how could he have gone this long without going through at least some of it?" And you would be absolutely right. He did. Along with many assorted relatives, he has gone through and gotten rid of a bunch of stuff. And then they did it again. And possibly again after that; I'm a little fuzzy on the details. So there couldn't be that much stuff left, right? Wrong.
This is where the life lesson comes in. I definitely have a bit of the pack-rat gene in me. I like to have all my stuff with me, packing frequently bring me to the brink of a nervous breakdown. My belongings are currently spread out across three states, and that's kind of stressing me out. BUT, today may mark a turning point in my attitude towards stuff. Despite my best intentions, I've already accumulated a few things to squeeze into my small suitcase. And you may be thinking "Oh, that's not so bad, surely you want some things to remember your Grandma by." And I have those things. Lots of them. And so does everyone else in the family, because we've already gone through it several times. And yet, new "treasures" continue to be found. Things that have been offered to me today include: many handkerchiefs, (side note: Why would anybody want a hankie? Gross.) many pairs of fancy gloves, a relief society manual, enormously large hair clips, a long braid made out of real hair, a vase I may or may not have given to my grandmother many years ago, really old stickers, and some 12+ year old gum. (Okay, that last one may have been a joke.) And that's just the beginning.
The big winner, however, isn't even for me, it's for my parents. It's a quilt, which means that yes, I will be toting a large blanket through airport security and multiple flights in addition to everything else I brought. Not only that, but it's possibly the most depressing quilt I can imagine. Years ago, when my Grandma was sick, my ward got together and made a quilt for her with a bunch of people signing squares. Most of them say "Get well soon." Who wouldn't want that back, right?
The shoulder devil in me came out today when, well into the garage sale, we discovered even more boxes in the garage to go through. Keep in mind that these boxes had not been opened at all since my grandparents moved out here in 2000. Now surely, anything you've gone without for twelve years can't be terribly important, right? You could almost certainly toss it all and never look back, right? Ahahahaha. Wrong. We went through all of the boxes, and there were lots of them, and lots of them were big. Contents ranged from old bowling trophies to a whole box of hankies to a faceless mannequin head. The best, however, were the boxes filled with papers, which naturally had to be gone through individually. Sitting out in the baking sun (I'm really not cut out for humidity) I watched and advocated the trash pile as my aunt went through page after page of (really dusty and sometimes spider-ey) junk, searching for family history treasures. And apparently she found some.
The attitude was summarized best later in the day when a different aunt came across an old plate commemorating my Grandma's first marriage. "More dishes?", she said. "Oh, well I have to keep this." (she also arrived by airplane) Really? You have to? Now, it's not like I don't understand the appreciation of family history, or even that objects can hold sentimental value (although I think most of those were picked through long ago). But there's gotta be a point where it becomes to much. I agree that some heirlooms are cool, and have already been in the family for ages. But does that mean that we keep them forever? And that the next generation keeps all of them, plus everything that was important to us? It gets ridiculous pretty quickly (and it was already pretty ridiculous.)
Anyway the moral of the story is that the computer age is a beautiful thing, stuff is overrated, and hopefully I learned to let go a little today. I'll let you know how it works out.
P.S. They sold the only lamps in the room where I'm staying. This doesn't really work into the story, but it's pretty depressing anyways.
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