Sunday, March 8, 2020

Moving


And, again – I’ve been quiet over the past week.  Well, I actually I haven’t been quiet, I just didn’t get to the computer all week.  It was a very busy week.

Monday, I decided it was spring.  Time to move all the plants out of the greenshed and back to the sunshine.  Which I did.  All umpty-jillion of them.  Took me two days to get them out and located someplace.  Hard work!  But my yard looks more like MY yard now.  My plants are beginning to shake themselves out of the winter-I've-been-locked-in-a-small-room doldrums and perk back up.




Of course, I moved everything out and we promptly had a cold front come through.  Wasn’t bad – middle 40’s to upper 60’s – so I didn’t have to move anything back inside.  That’s the way it works here – move your plants in and it turns hot again; move them out and here comes the cold. 

My oldest daughter came in from Albuquerque for a weeklong visit.  She works from my house during the day and we stay busy during the evenings.

One of the reasons she came was to help me go through things in this house.  As it happens, I will be moving sometime early next year.  (Honest to god, if I survive the next 12 months, I’m good for the next 20 years!)  The house I am moving to will be smaller than this one so I won’t be able to take everything with me.  We had many long conversations about –

“Why is this here? 
When did you use it last? 
Do you love it?”

Almost all of my answers were

“because I might need it at some future time possibly maybe could be
uhhh I don’t know
yes-maybe-possibly”

It was a tough week.  But we did get

The dishes for her two daughters packed into tubs (I bought vintage china for the four grandgirls and vintage café dishes for the grandboys some years ago so they’d have them when they moved into an apartment)


Every cabinet, closet, drawer, buffet, and room gone through.  There were things that I held firm on (yes, I HAVE to keep that).  Things that I was okay with getting rid of (why do I even still have that???)  And, things that I thought – Really?? Put that right into the trash.


It is odd, some of the things I found.  When I was small, my father was head of the pathology department in one of Houston’s big hospitals.  Consequently, my sister, brother and I got to attend many of the special shows’ celebrities would do for the hospital’s children ward.  Shows like this one 




I also found a folder filled with letters to my father.  They were written to him by buddies during WWII.  One day I want to transcribe them.  I think they will give another view on the war from the eyes of those young men.

One thing I’ve kept – with the thought that grand children might want to see what their 2nd great, great, and current grandmothers wore at different times – is special clothing.  Consequently, I have a huge steamer trunk filled with clothes.  Can’t take it with me now so, what to do with things like
  

A 1940, handmade, lace covered, chiffon
negligée

Vintage Full Body Fox (Head, Tails, Pelts)
Stole/Scarf

How about this –


A silk velvet, hand painted
evening cape

Also, under my guest bed, there are two huge file boxes of slides taken by my father from 1950 until sometime in the 1960’s.  Argh!  I’m going to get my brother and sister to make the decision on what to do with those.

We did accomplish a lot and currently there are 10 large tubs filled to the brim with miscellaneous stuff for the pending sale sitting in the garage.  (shhhhhhh - I did sneak out there after Denny left yesterday and bring in a couple of small things.)  There are 8 boxes of things set aside for grand daughters (dishes, glasses, pots/pans).  And two boxes of things (mostly old photos that everyone has gone through many times) to go to the burn pile at my friend’s house.

My daughter went home yesterday.  And, today, I’m just not accomplishing a great deal!

8 Mar 2020

5 comments:

  1. Downsizing is an important thing to do! I commend you!

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  2. Everyone has their own rules for downsizing. Mine included take at least one gift from everyone I loved, and some I didn't love, but who apparently loved me.

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  3. That's a lot of HARD WORK! We got rid of so much when we moved, but unfortunately our new house is bigger than the old one & it's FULL. I'm going to have to pretend we're moving again & do another purge.

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  4. Difficult but necessary work. Isn't amazing what we accumulate? I love the clothes -- perhaps you can find a smaller trunk or suitcases to save them in? They're marvelous, and who knows? I downsized about three years ago, and said good-bye to a lot of things. When I get wistful about some of them, I remind myself they were just *things.*

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  5. What a glorious cape! And well done you on getting so much done. It's hard discarding things. I tend to hang on just because or just in case. Sounds like having your daughter there did the trick.

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