Simoneaux: Finding a place for memories when clutter must go

Published 1:30 am Monday, March 12, 2018

By Larry Simoneaux

Just now, our trip to New Orleans is rapidly approaching.

Truth be told, we still haven’t made the decision to move back home. Hence, the trip. The hope being that by spending time there, getting together with family, looking at homes, and reacquainting ourselves with the sun, it’ll help with the decision.

No matter the decision, though, we’ve started to “lighten ship.” In other words, we’re looking around and have started getting rid of a lot of the “stuff” that we’ve accumulated over 47 years of marriage.

Scary business, looking into places where the doors are tough to close and under beds where boxes go to hide and never die, but we’ve been spurred along by having recently helped good friends move to a new, but smaller, home in a nearby area.

One of the first rules we’ve set is that if we have more than one of something (other than underwear), out go the extras. Thus, for example, I said goodbye to a number of spare tools that’ve sat unused for years in my tool chest. Too, a lot of kitchen utensils, drinking glasses, coffee mugs, baking sheets, muffin pans, my “spare” floor jack, unused cookbooks, and old magazines have found their way out of the house.

In addition to the above, we’ve gone through the bedrooms of our three “kids” (now 39, 34 and 33) and sent old (really old) toys, children’s books, school books, homework papers, clothes still hanging in their closets, shoes, etc. to either charitable organizations or straight into the recycling bin.

The really big surprise was just how much “paper” we’ve managed to accumulate over the years. Old instruction manuals for vacuum cleaners we no longer have. Records from medical appointments in the 1970s. Check registers (remember them?) from banks that no longer exist. And on, and on. Think two full “blue bins” of tightly packed, shredded paper.

And I don’t think we’re alone in this as, when I mention it to friends, many tell me they’re doing same thing.

For sure, we struggle with the nagging thought that “maybe we should just hold onto “this.” “This” being defined as just about everything we touch. What’s helping us get past that idea is that, if we do move, every pound we save reduces the amount we’re going to have to spend, which is going to be defined as “a lot.”

What comes next is the furniture. Even if we decide to stay, some of it dates back to our one-bedroom apartment in 1971. Other pieces show the scars and scratches of three kids and, now, two grandkids. Still others are just plain long past their “expiration” date.

My writing desk, for instance, has sat under the same window for so long that, despite my best efforts at remembering to polish it, the wood’s faded past the point of trying to refinish it. More to the point, the burn marks from the small crystal globe once given to me as a Christmas present will never “buff out.”

Those burn marks follow the precise path that the afternoon sun takes as it journeys across our west-facing window. That there’s more than one is testament to the fact that it never occurred to me to just put the darned globe into a drawer. It’s a “guy” thing.

Still, we’re making progress. We can, once again, actually park a car in our garage. The storage drawer under the oven closes without getting jammed. There’s now room in our closets for new clothes, and the foundation of our home has, apparently, ceased its slow journey toward the center of the earth.

That we still have a lot of “stuff” is a given. That a lot of it can go away is a truth. That it’s getting harder to let such go is a fact. The toughest things to deal with, though, are the memories. Large and small. Found without warning. Squirreled away here and there.

There doesn’t seem a way to get them organized, labeled, or into any sort of container. Most are attached either to the house itself or to the friends and neighbors we’ve made over 33 years.

We haven’t found a box big enough for them. Nor do we know where they’ll fit in any new home we might buy. One thing’s for sure though. If we do decide to move, they’re all coming with us. Keepsakes, you know. Not to be left behind.

And, of that, we’re both sure.

Larry Simoneaux lives in Edmonds. Email him at larrysim@comcast.net.