packing it in
Well, I think this is my last blog from my AZ winter residence. I use the words ‘I think’ only because it hasn’t sold yet, and I can’t seem to get my act together to get rid of my 12 years of accumulation! Why is it so hard to let go, I wonder? I shouldn’t even be sitting here writing this because… well, I am not even close to being packed up to go yet.
I’ve already made allowances for the fact that I’m incapable of letting stuff go. I can do it, but it’s foreign to me. I’m an accumulator, also known as a collector and sometimes referred to as a ‘hoarder’. Whatever it is, I’m not proud of it. I’m somewhat adverse, or maybe just plain uncomfortable, dealing with throwing or giving it away. Hell, it took me twelve years to accumulate all this stuff!
I’m okay with all this until I need to move, yikes! I also hide it well. You would never know I’m a hoarder unless you look into my cupboards and closets and … and… well, you get the picture. Oy, I wonder if this is treatable. Probably not, which is just as well because I mostly think there is really nothing wrong with this. Only if you have all your crap on display, or you can’t navigate through it… I guess.
My resistance to this packing stuff up and getting rid of shit is going to cost me in the long run, I know. I may have to fly back here, rent a car, and clean my place out properly when I get a sale. I know what you’re thinking, but… I JUST CAN’T! Why is this so hard for me? I have every size of clothes in my closets and apparently keepsakes that go back fifty years!
It has come to light just recently that the twelve pages of notes I wrote for my mom, when she offered to look after my daughter, have surfaced. I had to go back to work early and needed to make sure she understood what my new baby daughter needed. They were found in an old box of my pictures. My granddaughter (her daughter) is putting on a slide show for her mom’s fiftieth birthday celebration, coming up next weekend.
OMG… my mom raised seven of us, mostly by herself. She left my dad when I was twelve, I’m the oldest, and the youngest was still in diapers. We even ended up living on welfare, and how she even managed that I’ll never understand. Yep, I wrote those notes for her, which I found out later she never even read, lol.
This only came to light recently, when my daughter called me the other day. My granddaughter had left her mom in charge of her twin babies and sent notes along for their care. I squealed with laughter and told her about the twelve pages of notes I had left for my mom for her. She then informed me she already knew about that. My granddaughter had picked up a box of old pictures at my place and included in that box were those twelve pages of notes!
Why do I think I need to hang onto all this ‘stuff’? More importantly, why can’t I throw shit away? Well, I might need it someday is always a good reason, but really? My kids haven’t even seen all the home movies I so diligently recorded of their childhood. I’m not sure if they ever will either. Who has the old-fashioned movie projectors anymore? Well, truth be told, I DO! But it needs fixing some little part, who knows?
I do know that if they ever figure out how to make it work and get to see all those movies of themselves, recording their lives in progress, they will be in awe. I know that, but they don’t. I’ve seen movies of when I was little that my nana took, and let me tell you, they are precious! A cousin in my family put them onto a CD and omg… so many memories come to life again, and it is so cool.
My mom’s sister took over the movie thing from my Nana, her mom. These are precious keepsakes, and I know if my kids ever decide to actually look into what I recorded, they will be in awe. I know this, and I’m okay with the movies and stuff sitting around collecting dust. I’m content in the knowledge that they will someday actually see these moments caught on tape. I also know they will squeal in laughter and awe and will be so grateful that I took that time for them.
Well, when I sat down here to write my blog, it was an excuse to ignore what I should be doing. Look what showed up on my page, memories… It’s the miracle of our life journeys, recorded in our mind’s eye, pictures, and sometimes on 8-millimeter films….
Copyright April 16th 2026
the picture is of my mom