Cleaning out the closets, AGAIN

[tybec]

How many times?  Gosh, this is an endeavor.  I am not a hoarder by any means, but it is never ending.  I have moved, and it will be 6 yrs. in Jan. that DH died.  I keep letting go.  I don't know what to save for my son.  Some people are about saving everything.  I can't do that.  I can't just store things for him to have to go through. I know I am more stressed as I have a new home, and all my mother's things, too, although we pared down in years of her things. Two rooms still a mess of boxes. 

 

Still in a quandary about the pictures. What to do with all the family pictures with DH in them?  I have a NG and if we continue this path, we will be under the same roof.  This is still hard for me to wrap my brain around.  I have written about it before. 

 

The holidays.  UGHGH!!  You all know.....

[Toosoon2.0]

Since I resigned from my job, and the possibility of moving becomes more of an option, I've been thinking that i really need to get on this.  There are also half a dozen life sized ceramic self portrait sculptures my husband made that live in my garage.  What on earth am I going to do with those long term?!  I have the time to do some of this but not the motivation.  Its harder now, I think, than it was before when all I wanted to do was purge everything in an effort to feel like I was somehow "processing" or "excising" my grief.  But so much harder now and the thought of moving...oh my!

 

This is off topic but we just agreed to let M have her first sleepover birthday party which means we need to seriously get this place in order and clean (so that 10 year olds can destroy it).  Daunting to say the least! 

 

With regard to pictures, I'm an historian so I vote emphatically for finding a way to keep the pictures.  Could you box them up now and scan them over time if you feel you can't physically keep them?  If you have the extra funds, you could hire someone to do this for you.  Store them in the Cloud?  I would not let them go.

I work in an archive and pictures/nostalgia/memories are so important for so many reasons.  They can fill in blanks, answer questions, give solace; they tell a story of something important, no matter how seemingly insignificant.  They are "proof," if you will of one's past but also one's place in this world - maybe not just your son but maybe his kids or his kid's kids.  I'm also from a Greek family and have been researching our history.  Precious little remains.  We have an opportunity to preserve so much, so easily now about who we were/are, where we came from, where we went.  But I am sentimental.  Since Andy and I are both widowed the pictures themselves aren't an issue but I, too, have thousands of them.  Your post is a good reminder that I should take on doing something about them, too.

 

Stay strong!  xoxo

[tybec]

Oh, thanks Toosoon.  No, I won't get rid of the pictures.  But I had pictures all over my home of me and DH from wedding, engagement, family.  His military plagues, framed art he chose from military days.  That is the kind of stuff.

 

I will take the pictures out of the frames and keep until it can be scanned, like you suggested.  I will have a few up with my son and LH as it is his father.  But there are a lot.  And now I have my mother's framed pictures. She had a big one of me alone in my wedding gown as I am the only daughter.  What to do with this big framed picture of me 27 years ago?  Sad stuff to just pack away, but time....