On Christmas Day, while back in BC, my Nanna asked if I could kindly clean out her basement of all my belongings. To be fair, they had been there for more than 6 years - and I had only initially thought I was going to store them for 6 months - 1 year. So, as my Nanna ages and plans for herself, it's important to take care of details (like your granddaughter's 23 years of life summed up in your basement).
So, I took that task head-on and whittled the first 23 years of my life into 5 boxes and some odds and ends that fit in my suitcases. The rest went to my mom, to a thrift store and a few pieces of furniture remained in the basement since my dad has bolted a ladder to the crawl space, thereby making it virtually impossible to get anything large back out. So my bedroom set I got for Christmas when I was 11 remains, in part, under Nanna's house. I took everything I couldn't bare to part with.
Now, back in Ontario I am tackling the 'renovations' I envisioned a long time ago. I still need to get all the wallpaper glue off the remaining walls, and I may (rather unfortunately) need to strip the paint as the previous owners wallpapered over paint and cracks in the wall and I won't be able to cover it all up again with paint. I could wallpaper ... but I won't.
So, one of my big jobs is to pack up everything in the living room (which is where most of my life is - it's a living room, an office, a craft area and currently, my bedroom (I'm so cold these days that I'm sleeping in front of the fireplace, it's quite cozy really). As I pack up these boxes (and remember back to 3 weeks ago, packing up my life in BC), I realize a few things:
- just how much I can accumulate
- how unaware I am of what I even own
- how detached I am when it comes to packing things up (tossing, recycling or passing on things that I once spent money on)
It's mom, more is on the way to you as of today.
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