Geting rid of STUFF!

What do you do with all the stuff you accumulate during 63 years of living, 41 years of marriage and the raising of 4 kids?  Oh, and add to that more things from my mother's house. 

 

Case in point - her old telephone.  I mean it is a wall mounted, rotary dial phone.  I'm never going to use it but it just seems so callous to throw it away. Her speed dials numbers make me smile.  #2 Marilyn; #3 Dawn; #4 Janie Cell; #5 Dick; #6 Clarice; #7 Ross home; #8 Janie home....those are all people I love that have been such a part of my life.

I like this quote from The Life Changing Magic of Tidying up 

"The thought of disposing of things sparks the fear that we'll lose those precious memories along with them.  But you don't need to worry.  Truly precious memories will never vanish even if you discard the objects associated with them. "

With that in mind, I took out the card with her handwritten speed dial names and brought it home with me and got rid of the phone and 

it didn't hurt at all!

  Remember when we'd take our kids to Sears or Olan Mills to have pictures taken and then buy these big packets with lots of pictures?  I did that a lot! Got to love my hair...and don't George and I look so young?  This must have been in 1985.

Look at sweet little one year old Matt in his velour outfit! 

And my little Johnny who had just gotten over the chicken pox!  

Here are just a few of the photos that I have to deal with.  I am happy to report that I took photos of many of these with my phone and threw them away.  When I go back to Eagle in May I'll deal with all the millions of others!  Slight exaggeration there!

But I do love this one of Johnny jumping on my mother's bed.  I think I see a lot of Johnny in Isabella. 

Luckily for the past 28 years I've put photos into albums BUT do you remember the good deals on 'double prints'? Yep somewhere there are boxes of the doubles that I didn't put in albums.  Someday the kids will have to deal with 50 photo albums and my more recent photo books. After I go through all the double photos then I'll start on the really hard stuff like little plaster of Paris hand prints and popsicle stick planters that were Mother's Day gifts from my preschoolers!  

Again from The Life Changing Magic of Tidying up 

"It is not our memories but the person we have become because of those past experiences that we should treasure.  This is the lesson these keepsakes teach us when we sort them.  The space in which we now live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past."