What a mess!

Mama and Victoria did some rearranging in the house yesterday and it looks much better. Most of what I have to do will have to wait until Saturday and from there into next week. This week, starting on Wednesday, is revival at our church. With my early mornings it will be difficult to get enough sleep, much less tackle any projects. Both garages are still full and three vehicles have various items stuffed in them, but the house is looking better.


Mama will be getting some help on Wednesday and Thursday as two young ladies from the church spend the day with her to arrange things and unpack boxes. I warned her that if she is asking for help she better have a plan in mind. It would be overwhelming to have several people asking “Where do you want this?, Is this what you were looking for?, This is so cute, where did you get it?”, etc. Mama is not the most focused person I know and distractions like those would only add to her frustration at the daunting task of actually throwing stuff out.

I am assuming the yard sale is going to be announced soon. The weather is getting cooler and the garages are full. There is the smell of money in the wind and it can only be made if you are willing to sacrifice your best junk at ridiculously low prices. Having worked in the cleanup of the farm house has anchored the thoughts of getting rid of all clutter in Mama’s mind; not storing it off site, but getting rid of it altogether.

There have been some great little finds in the five dumpster loads of trash removed from the house. They are few and far between and a through cleaning has been needed to restore them to service, but they have made the digging worthwhile for Grandma. I look around at what we have sitting on shelves and stacked on bookcases and I wonder at the drive that compels us to keep these items. Most could sit in boxes, packed away for years and we would never miss them. So the question is. “Why do we have them? Why are they taking up room in our home and in our lives?”

A case in point is Beanie Babies. I still have five totes and twelve boxes of them. I have moved them in four different relocations and we never take them out and play with them, never share them with anyone, never think about why we are still keeping them. They were fun while the kids were collecting them and we spent a small fortune on them, but they serve no purpose and have almost no value to us now. They take up space in our garage, nothing else. Don’t get me wrong, I love memories. I just like them to take up less space.

My garage and my life are full of things that are too nice to throw away and too expensive to sell at a yard sale yet serve no useful purpose. It is like building a house for a grand piano that no one plays. So we pack them away with every move until we can decide what to do with them. We forget about them until the next move and wonder why we still have them. They move from the corner of one garage to another or from the back of one attic to another until someone comes along, like Grandma, and puts them in the trash.

I am working hard at not leaving a mess for my wife and children to clean up when I die. I am not sure I will succeed. There is some pretty strong opposition to that goal.