I feel nauseous. I'm dreading the whole idea of parting with (Gollum voice over ) my precious stuff.
I know there are things for which I have a totally irrational attachment It doesn't really help to know that. Knowing its crazy to be unable to let go of my collection of fabric scraps, or my nine boxes of rocks doesn't make it any easier.
So when I pick up my son at his apartment and we head to the car and he says, "I thought we would start at the storage lockers cause it will be easier than starting on your room" I have to tell him no. "First we have to start on the car, cause we can't fit anything else into it." I open the back door, grab a bag and start to sort right in his driveway. I didn't look at his face. I didn't want to see "the look". Every hoarder knows that look. Its the combination of dismay and disbelief and incredulity that crosses the face of anyone who isn't a hoarder. I hastily hide the half brick that floats at the bottom of the pile back under the seat of the car.
Its a remembrance from a very quirky place I worked half a decade ago. Yes, the brick has been in my car all this time. There is also a black garbage bag that is full of stuff rounded up from the floor and seat and trunk that is mostly but not all garbage. There are old papers from nearly a year ago, dead pens, old fast food bags, some pieces of fabric, a couple of pieces of clothing. I pull out the few good items and fill the bag with more garbage piled on the back seat. The trunk had been cleared out last month when I needed to put my snow tires on my car for a week of bad winter weather here in the mountains. My snow tires were still in the trunk. If my son hadn't declared Hurling Day I don't know when I would have put them back in storage.
Two garbage bags later, my backseat is mostly cleared off. Thank goodness he lives at an apartment with a BIG dumpster.
We drive to the first place I have two small storage units. Yes, we took pictures with his phone camera. Mostly so he would be able to remember what was there as we sort out and decide the fate of all my stuff. I'll get him to download them here when he has time.
I have a camera somewhere in my mess. I'll use it when I find it. Yes, photos. All the gory details in color.
The first one we open has among other thing, lots of other things, a box of magazines that are 15 to 20 years old for a hobby I don't actually do anymore. I had a 10 year fling with dollhouses, and never got one finished. I have moved this box of magazines, and all the stuff for this hobby that I haven't done for at least 10 years to Washington state and back again, and have paid $50 a month to store. I could have bought a fully furnished finished dollhouse with the storage fee. There are two poles for a king-size quilt frame I have never used. There is a half full dresser I don't use now and don't really want, with a few pieces of clothing worth keeping.
There are kitchen utensils. Some make the cut. Others are deemed trash and go into a garbage bag. We find a box of what I will refer to as "pretties" Things I've collected just because they are beautiful. I get to keep the art glass vase, my art glass paperweight, and a few others. I find that a few of them I can bear to part with. Every item comes out of the box and he says "Is this important to you?"
Out comes a doll of a Japanese giesha. "Is this important to you?" And I realize that the answer is not really. I realize that the memory of an item it was meant to replace was what is important to me, not the thing itself. The doll was a replacement for a doll I had as a child lost in one of my many moves. The original doll was a gift from my grandparents and it was a symbol of love to me.
I think about it for a moment. Its just symbolic. It isn't really love. It doesn't love me back. The thing about love objects, is that the love is all one way. I love it. It CAN'T love back.
The geisha goes into the Goodwill donation box. Someone with room for it can have it.
We go through everything in that storage and make decisions about it all. Relief washes over me as I realize we aren't going to do much with anything except the actual garbage today. I get to keep most of it for awhile longer. We go through the same process for the other two lockers. This is just assessment day.
The last locker is the hardest for me. This is the locker that has my fabric stash, my toy train sets, and my lego collection, and the nine boxes of rocks I inherited from my grandmother and 15 boxes of baseball cards I have no interest in but I inherited from my dad. I think this disease might be genetic.
We have been sorting all day, its starting to get dark and my son turns towards my fabrics and says. "Where do we start?" Thinking fast I say. "We can fit 8 boxes into my trunk." (The tires went into the storage till I can sell them.) "I'll take them to work and sort them there. My partner Susan will help me." Amazingly he goes for this. Another repreave.
So we pack them up and head for the store since it is on the way to his apartment. We unload the boxes of fabric and I'm done for the day.
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