My wife and I are getting rid of a lot of stuff from our long life together as we downsize, but it’s also to spare our children from having to sort through too many of our items when that time comes. I could say it’s a bittersweet experience, or that I’m feeling sad, or even that I’m terrified by the implications. It certainly takes hours and hours and days and days – maybe it will be weeks – to go through everything, and looking over individual papers and photos turns out to be the most time-consuming exercise. Offering stuff for sale on Craigslist or NextDoor at less than 25 cents on the dollar, maybe even 10 cents on the dollar, and deciding what is best donated presents its own challenges. Some non-profits are more responsible, or discerning, than others as to who will end up with the items. I tend to think battered women shelters or outreach programs for homeless veterans are best.
But here’s what is really new – new to me and maybe to you – as a byproduct of getting rid of stuff. It’s a break from the past and a new start in life. Well, that’s overly ambitious – I’m not 18 or 21 again, and my remaining lifespan is much shorter now than when I was on the cusp of adulthood. But I’ve discovered a kind of freshness to this exercise, something that overrides the tedium and the sadness in knowing that so much of my life is, in fact, over and done with. The prospect of doing something new or different, of beginning an adventure, has been lost on me of late. But I’m telling myself that this is just what I’m doing – going on an adventure, this new phase of life and newfound freedom.
Maybe I’m just feeling the lightness of unloading stuff; maybe I’m experiencing a feeling of no longer being so tied down. “Things” should not be what tie us down, though. Well, I’m romanticizing a bit here – you do need a roof over your head, as well as a bed to sleep on and cooking utensils and so on – and some people do collect important items from their travels around the world so those would be hard to give up.
But there’s that tension again – giving up versus starting fresh. I’m in the middle of the transition right now so I don’t really know how I’ll feel once we’re fully downsized and relocated. “Don’t look back,” people often say, but it may require some real fortitude to follow that rule.
Thanks, Abe. Your suggestions are good. I probably have 20 boxes of photos of family, especially after the first grandchild was born.
You are very concrete and I do use Iphone Google photos, so that's a good idea, too.
Nothing is ever easy.
Guy's parents were "neat," yet when he died (first, the FIL) we discovered they had saved tons of cardboard in rafters in their basement and it was all covered in mold. This is what I want to avoid.
But who will get my 1950s Donald Duck and LIttle Lulu comic books?
Problems of a very first world order.
I recommend James McBride, the writer...The Color of Water (memoir of a black man's Jewish mother), The Good Lord Bird (John Brown, fiction); and my favorite, Deacon King Kong -- growing up in the Red Hooks projects in Brooklyn, the black church, etc., again, a novel.
In the question about old photos, you can either scan the best onto a computer drive and copy to a DVD, which holds hundreds.
As we go through old photos, that’s what we have been doing. We can then watch them on the TV when we want to take a trip down memory lane. They can even be set to music as they play. ❤️😁