My dear friend in Richland, Margie Beldin, graciously allows me to share her dilemma: What to do with all this STUFF? Much of it, she explained, was hubby’s from his Air Force career and she wasn’t sure what he wanted done with it. But here she looks sadly on a big basket and two boxes of her own memorabilia, and sighs. And sighs a second time.
The problem Margie faced is totally understandable by most of us. We have centered our time and energy on gathering facts and possible facts and have paid scant attention to how to evaluate all of that accumulated STUFF. Not to mention the true artifacts.
Sorry, I can’t tell you how Margie’s coming along on this project. My only hope with sharing her story with you today is to hopefully motivate YOU to do SOMETHING with all your STUFF. Before your children toss is all out when you’re gone. And they will. If you don’t have time to do it now, yourself, why do you think they will take the time???
There is a new book on this subject – The Gentle Art of Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson. I first heard of it in Dick Eastman’s EOGN in early December. Even though I got rid of a lot of stuff before I moved last September, I still face a lot more to get rid of. I’ll be ordering the book to help guide me in the task.
HaHa, not much has been done with the boxes in the office because, as you stated, most of the stuff is my husband’s and I have actually told him that when he is gone, I am throwing his stuff away. But in his defense, he did get rid of the stuff in that big box in the picture, took all the Goodwill stuff to Goodwill and this week is taking our old printers to be disposed of.
For my part, however, I have been cleaning my stuff out. The stuff in the picture is all sorted and disposed of. Last year, I emptied one box in my office and just the other day, looked at the second box and told myself, “when I return from RootsTech, this box will get emptied”. And also went through a stack of magazines tearing out only the articles I wanted to read and got rid of the rest. Little by little…
It is hard to know what to do with the plaques, trophies, and souvenirs given and earned over the years. Guess I will be taking lots of pictures and digitizing them.
Thanks for the reminder to get that put on the TOP of my ToDo list.
(P.S., I don’t even remember you taking these photos!)