I've been auctioning off old office equipment and a soap opera wedding dress I found for my niece at a studio sale (we found her an even nice couture dress at the thrift store for even less money!) Bulky items that I don't want to ship have been relegated to CraigsList. Smaller jewelry tools and such head to the Garage Sale page on the Lampworker's Forum.
I was quite shocked this week to realize that the craft books I had accumulated while producing the t.v. show were over four feet high! All got listed and I've sold all but about a foot of them! This stack of craft books mixed with Southern Living recipes is all that is left!
I've cleaned out all the copper cookie cutters that never really sold from my website. They did well at shows where I could demo...but not online. As I called around to refineries in the area, I was amazed that copper only fetches around three bucks a pound (still, 90 bucks is 90 bucks!)! I mean, people have been stealing the wiring from new homes to sell the copper... do you realize how labor intensive that is??? It seems to me you'd make more picking up cans and bottles!
I've got bags of tin cutters to go along with the copper and a bag of stainless steel rods that are bent. And I've fired all the precious metal clay that had long since dried out to take to the fine metals refinery. I have bags of scrap silver from my wire classes and got on a wild hair and decided to get rid of all the jewelry I never wear.
That's where I hit a snag. How can get rid of the gold watch my mom gave me?? Forget that I intentionally stopped wearing watches in 1993! (Passive aggressive boss constantly asked me for the time.) Never mind that the watch no longer fits and still wouldn't if all the links were in place.
And what to do with these little treasures?
You may see a five dollar bill and a little bracelet that would fit a toddler. The bracelet was given to me by my sister when I was in her wedding in 1966. The five dollar bill was the last money my father ever gave me. I had begged off of seeing him the last weekend he was alive in 1975. My mother and he spent the weekend alone and she returned and pulled my allowance from him out of her pocket. I stashed it in my room and three days later, when I realized he was gone, I put the money in my jewelry box. I have no idea why my eleven year old self did that but now at 47 that five dollar feels like it weighs a ton.
So what do you do with memories that weigh too much? Do you cast them aside? Or do you hang onto them hoping some part of who you were still exists somewhere?
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4 comments:
I was just looking around my house, and planning a move that will happen within the next two years and find myself being overwhelmed with all the stuff that I've managed to collect..old and new memories and then perfect synchronicity today lead me to reading this blog post..Don't know if it will help you, but it gave me some breathing room and new ideas..
Obligation Clutter
I kind of like having my old stuff around, it reminds me who I was back then and whether I feel I'm improved since then. But I do go on cleaning jags where I get rid of stuff. Sometimes I wonder what will happen to my stuff when I die, and whether my family will like going through things and finding out things about me that they didn't know. I think it would be sadder if I just left behind things that were fairly recent. I like that you kept that five dollar bill, I hope you keep it forever!
Lots of old stuff here too. And the Momster says she has really cleaned out a lot each time she has made big moves. Some things she wishes she had kept, but . . . We think you should keep that five dollars - it has a lot more value than spending it could ever give you.
Woos ~ Phantom, Thunder, and Ciara
I limited my collections to just a few boxes. Actually, there is only one box that has stuff that I cannot ever throw out and there are a few in the attic that should be sorted through. Keep some treasures to pull out every few years and remember by.
Mango Momma
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