Baby steps

We've packed up most of my grandmother's genealogy research. I haven't done anything with it in the four years I've had it. I've moved it into filing cabinets and back into boxes for the move, then my husband put it into filing cabinets, and we've boxed it up again to go to a cousin who had worked with my grandmother on genealogy before. She says she'll scan it in and maybe send the originals to my sister.

So that's ten or twelve boxes. (Some of the old photographs are really quite large, so we have yet to figure out the packaging for them.)

We've removed all the toys and books from TG's room. (Except for a giant box and sundries in his closet.) These are currently in the Florida room (and, from previous confiscations, in the breakfast room and two ... no, make that three other closets in the house). I hope to go through those toys and books and select the most important ones ... and let the rest go, whether to friends who teach, library sales, Goodwill, or our annual neighborhood garage sale in the fall.

I took pictures of my beautiful antique bedroom suite. (My sister wanted to see pictures, to see whether she wanted to try to talk her husband into receiving it.) I think it's some of the most beautiful furniture ever; I picked it out as a birthday present from my parents when I was a teenager. (Our family tradition: each daughter received a set of bedroom furniture.) But. It doesn't make me happy. The wardrobe is much too large for almost any house on the market these days, and the handle for the main door is slightly broken and I'm afraid to fix it myself. I'm hoping to have a parishioner who has a "woodworks" business look at it and suggest options. I like the bed and nightstand (with the funny little cabinet for a chamberpot!), but I think it should all be kept together. I am hoping we will find a place for it where it will be taken care of and enjoyed. In any case, it must go.

Out of our house today: one pair of shoes and two shirts, as TG's hand-me-downs.

I am exhausted and emotional. I feel guilty that I haven't done anything with the genealogy materials and guilty that they're out of order and uncared-for. I feel like I've failed. And then there's the rest of the Stuff which is just everywhere. Well, except TG's room.

I'm reading (slowly) Don Aslett's For Packrats Only and was struck by the suggestion of "At least thin that collection of all the birthday cards you ever got." The correspondence file... well, okay, I do actually have all of the birthday, Christmas, etc., cards and letters I ever got. I probably don't need to keep correspondence of people I don't know and/or don't remember.