Opening the flood gate

I have started tackling one of the many things on my retirement To Do List. This resembles a bucket list, only a very practical one. Achievable, too, if you actually do it.

It is my photo project. It is daunting, to say the least.

It started with taking a box of loose photos belonging to my Mom, who passed 18 months ago. It's the last remaining task to wind up her affairs, which puts it all-too-neatly into a compartment, which seems sad and unfair for a person's life.

Going through her photos, dividing them among family members, was a sharp and sad reminder that she is gone. Many long, deep sighs went into sorting through the pictures, a flood gate of memories opening up, reliving so many good times -  of Mom, and all of us as a family. Missing her all over again; riding another wave of grief.


I was once given a card with this saying on it. So true, isn't it?

Well, I finished. Everything is in envelopes ready to give to my sisters, my brother, and even some cousins. The big box is empty.

Of course, this only served to remind me that my own photos needed attention.

Ordinarily a fairly well-organized person, subscribing to the notion, "A place for everything and everything in its place," somehow I fail miserably when it comes to photos.

In this case, it has meant jamming photos and keepsakes into a bedroom blanket chest that has never stored a blanket. The day of reckoning came when my own collection of my Mom's recently-sorted  photos would no longer fit into the chest. That, or I could no longer close the chest.

So...I got a banker's box, took a bunch of old file folders and labeled them in five-year time spans. Then I unloaded the full contents of the chest and started sorting.

Because I am doing this in my media center (also known as the bedroom), I needed to stick with the task or not be able to go to bed to sleep at night. I shifted piles to the floor for a few nights, then worked more speedily as I have an aversion to messes. Well, messes that I have to constantly look at.

Okay, the photos are now in their five-year-time-span folders. And now I don't know what to do with them.  Photo albums? Scan them all (we're talking thousands)? Sort by time period? Event? Make scrapbooks? What to do?

Until I figure out how to keep them all (or even whether I keep them all), all those beautiful photos and related memorabilia are in a banker's box, in five-year-time-span folders, awaiting further action. On top of the blanket chest.

But until I decide, I will savor all the memories my photos hold.

In nothing else am I rich. In nothing else am I poor.

Replacing ignore

Sometimes it pays to ignore things.

My computer has been working like a charm since I decided to "ignore" the virus warning that supposedly is, in itself, a virus.  While I do not recommend this course of action, it has worked for me.  Well, at least for the time being.

However, ignoring the piles of stuff in my house, year after year, has not been the best idea.

These are photos and memorabilia I have collected...and collected...and collected.

I always planned to sort them all in chronological order, mount them in photo books, and then label everything. I read somewhere once that it's one of the nicest things you can do for your kids.

Well, here they are.

My closets and drawers are filled to overflowing with more stuff.  I won't be snapping any more photos of them, for fear you will call The Hoarders and I'll see myself on a TV episode.  You'll be going tsk, tsk, and my children will be saying, "How did we let this happen?"

Since returning from Arizona, I've been determined to streamline and simplify my life, another phrase borrowed from something I read somewhere, and a fancy way of saying I don't know where to put anything anymore.

And if we can do without it all for six months of the year, living in a mobile home in Arizona, why do we need it all here?

I did go through all my books already this week, filling a shopping bag for Half-Price books. I might get a buck-two-eighty (ala Garrison Keillor) for all of them. But it was very hard to part with them.  I had planned to re-read them someday (yeah, right).

My clothes closet was crammed with blazers and suit jackets, none of which I wear in my new retirement life. They're no longer even in style.  Oh, and did I mention several of them don't fit anymore? 

And since I can't possibly live long enough to complete all the stitching projects I have fabric for, or the skeins of yarn that I thought looked good at one time, they're getting thinned out as well.

Another thing I read once from some organize-your-life expert was that rather than thinking of getting rid of things, substitute the word recycle. It works for me. I'm into recycling. Perhaps someone else somewhere might appreciate my junk stuff.

Isn't springtime just the best time to undertake such a mission? Spring fills me with new energy, after a long winter of dormancy.

These days, ignore is gone from my vocabulary. Nike's slogan, Just do it, has taken its place.