Moving Right Along
I heard from NCI about the clinical trial. I do not have the needed marker. That out of the way, Life goes on. Mara and I are cleaning out the ratholes in the house, or at least, attempting to. I have run into some snags. What to do with Stuff.
There is stuff I just want to throw away. No problem other than the lack of space in the dumpster. Fortunately, one of our neighbors is a bachelor and doesn't generate much trash on his own. He took up some of the slack from our Monday session. But today is Wednesday, the dumpster is empty and we have 4 days of dumping ahead. I guess we will have to store some of it in the garage and get rid of it a bit each week.
Then there are other things that I want to get rid of, but not to the county dump. We packed up 2 large boxes of books and took them to Half Price Books. They gave us a whopping $10. wow. I bought a 2007 calendar and walked out with less than half of it. Rather unsatisfying. I asked if these books ever made it on-line. No, they don't; they are only sold locally. Too bad. I had Community Economic Development books in there. Not much of a market for them here, but someone, somewhere wants them and is willing to pay more than $.10 for them.
And this brings me to the Other Things. These Things are things that either belong to one of my children or I feel one of them might want, but I don't want cluttering up my rather tiny house. And I don't want to leave them for Daddy to deal with. So, what to do with them? Frankly, I really don't know. I could list them here and let people let me know what they want and . . . then I am still stuck with storing and distributing Things. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. This has been a thorny issue for me for at least a year now. All responses welcome. You don't have to be a family member to come up with a good idea!
Comments
To my siblings: if there are particular items you are interested in (I'm not talking about taking the rug out from under Daddy - more like Maman's jewelry, rubber stamps, etc.), please email me. If Maman knows our interests now, we can consult her and each other about what items should go to whom.
Please take me seriously on this. Not living here, you may have some distance from it, but I promise you the Stuff of the house has produced a wrinkle in the existence of those living here. And I suspect that once you get here and start looking at Stuff you'll find you have sentiment attached to it. I know I do.
Posted by: Mara | November 29, 2006 3:07 PM
Stephanie -- I am most interested in learning from your experience, as we are looking toward following suit in perhaps as little as four years. My concern is what to do with the stuff that is too valuable to throw away, and yet either noone in the family wants it or is prepared to take it. -- Claude
Posted by: Claude Dean | November 29, 2006 11:23 PM
Claude -- This has been plaguing me for the last 5 years or more. Please research this (quickly!) and let me know. I haven't gotten to the attic yet, which is where most of that stuff is. And, of course, being an ardent follower of Antiques Road Show, I imagine that some of these things (and very random things) may be worth more than they actually are, making them evem more difficult to deal with. Also, I take it from your comment that you are not really interested in them either?
Posted by: ma | November 30, 2006 8:47 AM
Yup, that's correct! -- You might check our local flea markets, which I gather function like ongoing yard sales. For other items, I might look to ebay.com or craigslist.com. -- Claude
Posted by: Claude | December 1, 2006 7:07 PM
We have an ebay store- as in a store that sells stuff on ebay for you. THey want stuff that is worth more than a hundred dollars- but would take smaller stuff if it adds up or reliably sells.
That might be the easiest way.
Posted by: R . T. Bean | December 1, 2006 8:34 PM
You might try taking some group pictures of the stuff and posting it on Flickr and having your family go through the photos. THey can leave notes (the things with the little boxes actually on the picture) or comments below if they actually want any of the stuff.
I'd start with a few large plastic bins, one for each kid (aren't your kids color-coded?) and start filling them up.
Posted by: Valerie | December 1, 2006 9:13 PM
Being cheap, I'm using cardboard boxes. And the stuff I can't just give away? I'm leaving it for someone else to figure out what to do with.
Posted by: ma | December 2, 2006 5:12 PM
How about notes? The it's not clutter, it's annotated heirlooms. I have a china bowl from a great-grandmother with a chip in it, but it has a longish note written on a scrap of envelope about the bowl's origin. And it's in my great gramma (g.g.'s) handwriting. More precious to me is a bracelet in a box with a similar but smaller encilled note "gift from parents for HS graduation, 1912"
I don't think edith alten predicted one day she'd have a great granddaughter named erin alten randel, who could use a monogram bracelet and really dig that taking out of the box each time and reading the note was a prayer of thanks to her? There are several boxes of nice things, a scant few with annotations, that were help out of the garage sales etc. at the time and saved for wedding gifts for the grandchildren who were, like, 12 and younger at the time the grandparent passed. It was a really nice surprise. More so the useful things than the "beautiful" stuff. I have finally found, among my gramma mullally's camping supplies, a wooden spoon with a scraper angle and a gloriously aged finish. I looked for years at bamboo scrapers after you showed me yours and that you wanted another. (I think I sometimes am still looking but forgot why.)
Hmm. I know nothing baout blogging. Is it okay to respond so later? PS we were color coded too and starting this christmas apparently the same birth-order color code is being applied to my daughters. (yup. DaughterS.) Which is confusing, since I am and should always be green. Oh well; for now my green toothbrush is much bigger than her green toothbrush.
Posted by: Erin Randel | January 21, 2007 9:28 PM