The Stuff We Keep

I have been handling a lot of "suff" lately, cleaning out Walter's houses, clearing out my own house, and going through Daddy's papers for the hundreth time. Starting with my own "stuff." I worked for at least two hours cleaning out my walk-in closet so that I could actually walk in it. I filled three boxes with clothes and shoes that I didn't or couldn't wear any loner. I organized my blouses/tops/sweaters by color. After doing this, I realized that even after filling three boxes, I still have so many that I hardly have enough space on that rod to see what I have in my closet. There is something wrong with that. I need to apply the one in and one out rule. I have so much more cleaning out to do. I want to take one room at a time and give away or throw out about half of the "stuff" in my house. I think that with less clutter, it would be so much easier to keep the house clean, which would let me relax at home.

My sister and I realize now that Walter was almost as bad of a hoarder as our father is, he just had more space to store it. We have thrown out bags of paper. He kept every piece of mail and the envelope that it came in. Now, having said that, I have found a couple of very interesting things that I am really glad he didn't through out. He had a cigar box of letters that my grandmother had originally kept (I guess hoarding is three generations deep). They were letters that he or my dad wrote when they were overseas during WWII and the Korean War. She also had kept newspaper articles about Walter's heroism that earned him the Bronze Star. He also had the letter sent to my grandmother on the event of her retirement from teaching in 1952 after 32 1/2 years. The letter showed that she was going to receive $52.24 per month in retirement.

Daddy is still looking for his checkbook he lost somewhere downstairs three weeks ago. He has looked through the same stack of papers 30 times. It is still not in there.