Sunday, August 30, 2015

Cleaning House

I've been away from the computer for the last few days though I've still ran a few searches and checked the usual suspects for market leads when time allowed.  But the markets are either finding more clever places to hide or they're just not there.  Perhaps after Labor Day. 

If you're looking for a good way to find story ideas try cleaning out your mother's house.  We've been at it for the last three days and we're still not done.  I don't think she ever threw anything away, but I know for a fact that they cleaned out their house about twenty years ago because a great deal of it wound up at my house.  Mostly my childhood treasures and a few things my mother passed along to me. 

There is so much stuff to go through and decide if we want to keep it, let the house cleaners take it, or just toss it.  We've been finding such random things as a coffee can full of those plastic bread bag ties to letters from back in the fifties, not to mention a few personal items that brought a blush to my sister's face.  And I don't know how it wound up on the living room floor but that's where I found my mother's thimble.  I never saw her use a needle and thread without that thimble on her finger.

There are so many memories and random discoveries about my parent's life together that the stories just keep crowding into my brain.  Hopefully one day I'll be able to write them down both as fiction and stories for my grandchildren so they can know about their grandparents and the large family that we all grew up in.

2 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

My parents took the opposite approach and kept very little by the time they died. They moved a lot and when they moved from PA to MI they got rid of almost everything. We were able to clean out their apartment here in a few hours. Sad in one way, a relief in others. Hope things are going well for you, Sandra. What a very hard year you've had.

sandra seamans said...

My parents moved around a lot when I was a kid, Patti, but they've been in their present house for 47 years so there's lots of accumulation. Things are going as well as can be expected. I try to keep busy and that helps.