Going through boxes

[pegkerr]

I am starting a push to go through the dozens of boxes (perhaps more than a hundred) that are filled with the stuff that Rob left behind that consist of--everything.

Rob hated to throw things away. The girls and I resorted at times to actually sneaking garbage out of the house when he wasn't looking. When he got stressed, he would simply pile everything in a box, willy nilly, and shove it into a corner. When I would get after him about trying to get rid of things, he would resort to filling boxes and hiding them--in the garage, in the deepest recesses of the closets, in the basement.

He never dealt with his legal files, never had a file retention/discard policy. He simply kept EVERYTHING, and he practiced law for 17 years. When he stopped practicing law, he kept everything in a storage unit, paying shameful amounts of money to keep it, and when he lost his job, I finally put my foot down and said we weren't paying for storage anymore. Then he moved the law practice stuff into the garage--and stored his car on the street. It has all been left for me to deal with.

I open up those boxes and it's unbelievable what I am finding. His bank statements from when he was in college (and he died at age 62). Telephone messages, scraps of paper with notes, the daily daycare reports from when the girls were babies.

I can't bring myself to simply toss it all, because when I go through the boxes, I do find treasures. I found his copy of the fortune cookie message he used to propose to me. I've put it in a little frame and it sits now in my office (mine is pasted in my journal). I found letters from his father, and oh, any number of interesting and touching things.

But there are boxes I open up and say, "Why, why, why? Why did you stuff a filing cabinet with magazines from 1982? Why did you keep the mimeographed instructions from your college about how to register for classes? Why the run of phone books from the 1990s? Why the bowling league score sheets from 1978?"

I have seen more and more clearly that I don't want to do this to Fiona and Delia when I die. It is a huge imposition to the people you love left behind if you don't bother to deal with culling your stuff. It is grossly unfair that I have to deal with disposing of Rob's legal files.

It is also emotionally gutting. I've cried over things I have found in those boxes.

But it is enormously satisfying that I am slowly, slowly making progress.

Comments

[naomikritzer]

The mix of trash and treasure is so damn hard.

My ILs had saved things like receipts for purchases made during trips taken in the 1960s. Credit card statements from back when it was still "MasterCharge." But then you'd stumble across things like the watercolor notebooks taken by Ed's mother on trips and filled with beautiful tiny paintings and drawings of things she saw.

[dd_b]

I *am* glad I have my highschool bank statements, though; they've let me verify or correct a number of memmories (job starting date, when I bought early cameras and how much I paid, things like that). But I didn't keep too many old magazines, or any old phone directories, or much random paper, just files of categorized paper. Your "Why, why why?" are, yeah, things I didn't keep.

[pameladean]

*sneaks off to get all those old issues of Vegetarian Times and Organic Gardening and recycle them*

I did keep a lot of stuff from Carleton and actually used it to write Tam Lin. Did I then toss it? Um. No. But hey! It can go to the archives with my other papers.

I fear a lot of accumulated junk of this type began as "I am going to get to that soon" but soon never came. My mom has gotten rid of a LOT of stuff but I still expect it to be gutting to go through. Just not as productive of "why why why" as Rob's stuff is. I'm sorry it's so hard.

P.

[mrissa]

My great-aunt and -uncle went through this with his parents. They found, for example, his grandmother's wedding ring in a box of fishing tackle. So they were incredibly reluctant just to say, "eh, throw it all," because there were treasures.

But watching them have to go through this when they were old and ill and needed to move into assisted living made me very, very conscious of not keeping it either for my heirs or for my later self. This hard thing you're doing is a good hard thing. I'm really sorry you have to, but: good job, you.

[minnehaha]

You can safely toss the box I labeled for tossing. Your sister and mom and I all knew when I labelled it that it was nothing but losing lottery tickets and grocery store receipts.

His alma mater has a really good archivist or historian or whatever. I've worked with him on research. You could set aside old stuff and send it to him to decide if those mimeo'ed sheets have any historical value. I have worked in enough archives with paltry thin collections and ones with surprising depth, but don't know which the school has. You might like having donated a small pile of things into The Rob Surname Collection at School.

Yes, I know that makes more work for you. But I would also help you sort the wheat and the chaff. Also, my recycling day is every-other-Tuesday. You can always ask if there's space for more old paper in the bin. (It is often full, but still.)

K.

[jbru]

I have a lot of this with Ericka's stuff as well. Am working on a plan for renovation/addition that involves the garage and so was perusing some of the things there that haven't been dealt with. Spotted a box of time sheets for her PCAs that had been submitted to the agency. She got a copy of those and, of course, kept them. The one or two times they were useful in making sure someone got paid for an additional few hours weighed against the years of them in a box. (Maybe toss them after the pay is settled? No, no. That wouldn't sway her.) Complicating this is Ericka's history with money. Her family was pretty well off, but her father controlled the finances, giving her mother an allowance for food and necessities. Sometimes there wasn't enough for the kids to eat, so she took to stashing cash in places where it could turn up in lean times. So while I'm sometimes very close to the "fuck it, toss it all" state, there's this nagging worry that there could easily be hundreds of dollars in 10s and 20s stashed in these boxes. (Ericka's anxiety transferring to me through time.)

[aome]

Two Christmases ago (2017), I took a look around my mom's house and gave her a task: to start going through her stuff. I gave her ten years to do it (my mom was 76 at the time, and although she uses a walker, she's in good health and has good genes; it's likely she will still be trucking along in 10 years). I told her even if all she did was toss two things per day, that would be great. I know she hasn't done as much lately, but she's always been good about updating me on things she's gone through, tossed, donated, etc, and she's definitely made progress. There's still a LOT left to do, of course, but - yeah. As the only child, I'm already going to be the sole person going through BOTH my parents' homes, and since my father won't toss anything (not for the same reason as Rob - my dad simply refuses to add to landfills in any way; he'd rather reuse, repurpose or burn anything he doesn't want), it's my mom who got the request. Also, my dad's short-term memory currently lasts about 35 seconds (no joke) so he wouldn't remember I'd asked anyway.

Anyway, as the one who will eventually be on the receiving end of the job, I thank you for wanting to spare Fiona and Delia the stress of what you are going through with Rob's stuff. Congrats on the progress you've made, and I hope the little treasures - even the tear-inducing ones - are reminding you of happy times.

[madrobins]

That's a hard thing to be left with, even if the "I'm not a hoarder, I'll get to it" person is still alive. My father went blind in his 80s, and had to move out of his house, which by then had been transferred to me. In the process of clearing it out in order to rent it, we had to go through all the stuff in his design studio, which was on the lower level. Since it was all technically Dad's stuff, we had him sit and opine as to whether things could be tossed or kept. Compete years of client billing from the 1930s. Carbons of every letter he ever wrote. And Dad, who had found a college design program that wanted his papers (by which I suspect they meant 'papers relating to the design work he did' and not 'papers relating to everything ever,' insisted, when queried, that every single thing should be kept.

It wasn't until half way through the process that my brother realized: He's blind. Only ask him about the stuff that looks important. He won't know if we tossed the bills or the letters to his dentist. Made the process much easier.

Even so, we did find a letter from Albert Einstein to his accountant (who was also Dad's accountant) which had somehow found its way into Dad's files.

[lydamorehouse]

I sympathize completely with your plight, but I find myself facing the opposite. My parents are very much divesting themselves of anything personal as they grow older. I've already lost the chance to cry over their detritus or find any hidden treasures; they're all already gone (some of them before I had a chance to say, "WAIT!") I'll be left with sterile property to sell and bodies to bury, nothing more.

I don't want to leave Mason a house full of garbage, but I do hope that, when I go, someone will lovingly and painstakingly look through th things I've left behind and, like you are now, be flooded with memories (and exasperation!) of me.

[akamarykate]

I'm sorry this is so hard. The only helpful thing I can think to say is that I've found these overwhelming tasks really do start to pick up steam if you do them little by little; at some point, you can start to see the end point, and how much relief you'll feel once it's done, and momentum pulls you through to the finish. I hope that point comes for you very soon, if it hasn't already, and that the treasures you're finding bring your heart some ease.

I totally understand the need to go through everything, emotionally exhausting as it must be. My dad's parents were teenagers during the Great Depression, which might account for why my grandfather, who was the VP of the Federal Reserve in our city, hid cash all over the house. My father and his siblings had no idea. After my grandmother died, they were cleaning up the house to sell it. Dad was about to toss an empty paint can, opened it to be sure it had all dried up, and found $800 in cash inside. After that, they didn't dare throw anything away without a thorough going-through.

[carbonel]

That gives a new meaning to the term "wedding tackle"!