This weekend was all about letting go of *stuff*. Sam and I, along with his sister, her boyfriend, and his nephew spent Sunday tackling the long avoided storage unit. This storage unit has been with Sam since his mother passed away nearly ten years ago. Other than the 19 boxes of mine that Mom and Dad sent me from the attic, that storage unit was filled with boxes of books. And I’m not exaggerating. Around two dozen boxes (we’re talking the 3.0 cf sized ones) filled with books. Books of every genre, size, shape, and age. Even multiples of some books. It took several hours, but eventually that storage unit was emptied. Those books, along with a few other assorted items are now at the Goodwill to find their future homes. (Sam has been joking that, since most of those books were purchased at the Goodwill, it’s more of a return than a donation.)
As for my stuff, those 19 boxes came home with us. I spent two hours on Sunday night sorting through around 15 of them and finished the rest Monday night. The boxes contained childhood papers, books, toys, misc. junk, and more. It felt like Mom saved *everything* that was in my room as a child. As I went through the boxes, I kept thinking to myself, “When did I get this? Who gave it to me? Why did I save this?”. In the end, I filled two large boxes, a trunk, and a garbage bag to go to the Goodwill, not to mention a very large garbage bag to go to the dump and I nearly filled our co-mingled recycle bin. Out of the 19 boxes I sorted through, only one large box of toys (legos, a couple of Breyer horses, a tea set, etc.) and one small box (favorite childhood papers and outfits/costumes) have found a permanent home.
The moral of the story: Stuff is temporary, memories are forever. Let go of the stuff and keep the memories. The less you have weighing you down and holding you back, the freer you are to make new memories.
