Reason 51: Dad's Boxes
100 Reasons I'm Retiring
I made my last trip to Dad’s house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware in August of 2022. My brother and I had spent two summers sorting through the accumulation of Dad’s possessions, made more challenging by the fact that he had NEVER gotten rid of anything. As an example, when Mom and Dad moved from Swarthmore in 1998, Dad brought down the extra wood from the hardwood floor, convinced he’d need it someday.
He did not.
But Harvey and I DID need to make twenty trips from the attic to the driveway to bring it all down.
Dad insisted Harvey and I “take stuff”. I stuffed as much as I could into my SUV and still see out the back window.
Some of it went to GoodWill and some of it was tucked into areas around the house. I even forced my children to take SOMETHING. But there are a lot more boxes to unpack!
I’ve also vowed not to leave it all for my children to do someday.
Have you helped someone downsize? Or downsized yourself? What was the hardest part?
In 2021 I had to do a whole house remediation for mold. In the process, the original handyman I used to clear out 'stuff' from the basement used my shopvac even though I told him not to because it was set up for water and had no filter in it. The furnace picked all the dust and blew it throughout the whole house requiring a total house cleaning.
In the process, I had to sort through old things I had been storing of my own 'stuff' and also all the assorted items that had accumulated from my parents and MIL ...and the things my two sons had left behind when they moved out on their own...and my husband who had passed away ten years previously. That was a huge job and very emotional. I had a dumpster in the parking area and the time was right to be ruthless in my purging and I was. So many things that no one would want, even a thrift store. Many things did make it to the local thrift shop but there were so many things they could not take because no one wanted coffee table books, etc anymore.
It was HARD sorting through the history of my life, my parents, my sons, and...my beloved husband. My sons took a few items but their houses are not huge so many things were left for the dumpster. Sigh. In the end I felt lighter and less burdened by everyone else's memories that were not really mine to keep for them any longer.