That's what has been running through my mind all day. Cleaning out and packing up has reached a level where I no longer care and I toss more than I pack.
How does one ever pack up such a house? 6 bedrooms, three bathrooms, a sprawling farmhouse with full basement and mud room, built-on enclosed patio – with 23 years to pack it all in.
There are the things of course. There are the toys from when we were kids, now finding their second life when the grandkids come to visit. There are the supplies – tools, gardening equipment, fabric and sewing notions. There are the books – gazillions of them from infant books to encyclopedias. There are the clothes and the furniture, the dishes and the gifts, the souvenirs and the photo albums, the knick-knacks and the exercise equipment.
How is one supposed to go through all of this and decide? What will go (extremely limited room)? What will be kept in storage (perhaps a bit more room, but is it necessary)? And what must be gotten rid of? And then if something is to go, you must ask – how? Is it to be sold online, given to a friend, left at a charity shop, sold at an auction? And though this may seem a bit perplexing but still quite doable for a handful of items, when it is multiplied by the contents of an entire house…then what?
But it isn’t just the things, of course. 23 years in the same house means it isn’t full of just things. There are the memories. Good and bad, they are packed between nearly ever floorboard, stacked in the corners, hidden behind curtains and floating in the air. We recite the memories to each other while we try to sort and pack and clean. Somehow, it relieves the pressure to relive the memory. It makes the packing and sorting easier to do when you know you’ll always have that memory.
My nephew’s eyes shone like bright stars as he showed me his ‘new’ truck. I’d seen it before, but watching him demonstrate all the features to me gave it a new life. This was a truck of my brother’s when he was small – a little white truck and trailer, with childish handwriting in red permanent marker down the side, “Beaver’s Trucking, Inc.” It was my oldest brother’s first, but we all played with this truck at some point. I distinctly remember using it in the sandbox when we first moved to this house. It had been buried at the bottom of the toybox for several years, but found new love in my nephew, who I think even sleeps with it at night.
"A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesseth" is good advice straight from our Master's lips... advice which rings true as we relieve ourselves of all our possessions and keep the memories for later perusal.
Each thing has a story; each corner holds a memory. And today I know that I am plain rich - not because of my possessions or my abudance - but plain rich in plain, good things.
I remember doing that, going through all the things, especially my childhood possesions, and trying to figure out what to take and what to leave...My decision turned out to be very simple (though not easy). I left it all. I got rid of everything, everything except for the memories, and even some of those I think I let escape.
ReplyDeleteThere is something freeing about packing all your worldly posessions into a backpack/suitcase, and setting out for the unknown. It really does give the weight of our Master's words their full value. Life is so much more than the earthly 'treasures' we carry.
I agree about the freeing part! Part of me just wants to get rid of it all and pack up a suitcase or two. But, then the practical side of me kicks in...because there's a good possibility my brother and I will be back to live here in a year or two, so it's probably wiser that I save some things and not get rid of it all.
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