Like Mother Like Daughter

Here is my latest dejunking purge.

When I was 16 my family moved from Saratoga, NY all the way to Ashton, Idaho. We stayed with my grandpa while my mom looked for a new place to live because my dad was dying. Ashton is a very small old railroad town with not much to do for a bored and disturbed teenager besides swimming in the ditch and eating huckleberry milkshakes. Wandering and bored I did a lot of snooping around my grandpa's house, but I was cautious and timid in my snooping because we were raised to fear our grandfather and respect his house and privacy. So I would open closets, cupboards, and drawers only touching a few items before hastily shutting them again. I will never forget opening a drawer in the upstairs bedroom. It was a drawer crammed full of old (very vintage), used, and carefully folded wrapping paper. Paper that my frugal grandmother had saved from gifts she had been given long long ago. Grandma died when I was 9. Later I learned that she saved much more than wrapping paper and everything that came her way was reused or saved with the hopes of getting just one more use out of it. She would have put any modern envioronmentalist to shame with the way she reduced reused and recycled everyday trash.

My mom inherited grandma's saving tendencies and passed them down to me. Sadly my "tendencies" aren't as romantic as a drawer full of beautiful old paper, mine are just out right pack ratty. I save all sorts of junk in the hopes that it will save me money down the road. I hoard all kinds of things for art crafts that I never do. I stash all manner of sewing novelties and scraps for the custom art jeans I plan on making and selling someday but have yet to make a single pair. I save bags, boxes, and every manner of product packaging container hoping they will make me organized but I forget I have them and they are such odd pieces that they would never help with organizaton anyway.


I've recently had the desire to use or unload all this k-rap (see Cookie, Mommy isn't using that really naguhty word anymore. Spelt with a k is something completely different) and have been on a dejunking spree and my mom has joined me. My mother, the queen pack rat of our family, though, is doing what many proffessionals tell packrats all the time. If you feel you need it, just take a picture of it. Pictures take up much less space than the actual item. Well, she ids doing just that and posting them on a blog to boot. So, if you have voyeristic tendencies and have always wanted to know what kind of junk hides in a pack rat's house and why they keep it then stop on by DOTMOTHER and cheer her on as she frees herself from her junk.


And mom, if you can toss yours then I can toss mine. It's scary that we have identical junk.

Here I am tossing out all those plastic zip up bags that bedding (and some toys) come it. I was saving them to use for organizing or for moving, neither of which has happened in 4 years (and I didn't use them when we moved 4 years ago either, I shoved them in a box with everything else).

Death of a Quilt

Here is my latest Dejunking purge:

The sad thing is that I have only gone through 1/4 of the house. There is plenty more to be gone through, but already I can see a difference. Already I'm doing laundry more routinely as we run out of clothes more quickly.

*

But that isn't what I'm here to talk to you about today. Today I want to discuss a very serious subject with you. It will be hard to talk about for some of you. Maybe some of you will use denial but we all have to face this subject sooner or later. You know what I'm talking about, we all have some stashed away somewhere. It's that piece of junk that you keep trying to throw away, you know you should throw away, family members have begged you to throw away, but you just can't. You can't because that junk MEANS something to you. You worry that if you toss it it will come back to haunt you. So you hang on to it, hoping that someday you will be able to resurrect it, use it, or somehow validate its existence once again. Yeah, I'm talkin' about THAT junk. Nasty, vile stuff. It preys on our emotions, using our memories and our guilt as a defense to keep its self alive. But it isn't alive. If an object is no longer useful or being used, if it embarrasses you to have others see it, if you spend more time storing/moving/hiding it than you do loving it then it is D-E-A-D dead. This explains all the skeletons hiding in my closets. Well, if my mom can get rid of her "perfectly good" ball of clay (seriously mom, that pic gives me the heeby jeebies), then I think I can finally bury my precious quilts.

*

Fellow bloggers, we are gathered here today to pay our respects to Fuzzy #1 and Opus.

*

Fuzzy #1, you were lovingly made by Mr. Hotness' mom and you were so fuzzy that Mr. Hotness loved you over all others. I know there were times that I was jealous of you. I admit to hiding you a few times, and I was constantly teasing Mr. Hotness about your existence. But you were a good quilt, and we used you well. I held on to you, hoping to turn you into a refurbished quilt. But, alas, I am lazy and you are dead.

*

GoodbyeFuzzy #1.

Opus, oh Opus. You used to wear a flashy red bow tie at your neck. My boyfriend made you for me many many years ago. Remember that? It was the year when we all made quilts for each other. Oh, Opus, you squat little penguin from Bloom County, how I love you. As the only quilt ever made for me by a man I consider you a rarity that should be bronzed and hung in a museum for all to appreciate. Unfortunately I am so very lazy that I couldn't even manage to recover you. It is time to say adieu.

* (sniff sniff) Opus, please, I beg of you, don't look at me like that.