Because I am an only child, the job of cleaning out my parents’ home after my mother’s death in 2015 fell to me. Many of you have been through this.
It was the first time I regretted being an only. My husband stood by to help, but I had to touch everything myself and determine what to bring home, what to give away and what to toss.
As I worked my way through drawers and closets, I discovered so many things I was glad my parents had kept. Items that would mean nothing to anyone else were treasures to me.
I found piles of old photos, like the one of my grandfather’s family in 1928. I found our complete family history going back to the emigration of my great-great-great grandfather from Ireland. It was hand-printed on a big piece of butcher paper.
I unearthed all the pocket knives my dad carried over his lifetime, several little rings his sister wore and her husband’s New Testament dated 1938.
I unearthed a stack of old, yellowed gospel songbooks (they weren’t called “hymnals” in the ‘30s). My dad sang bass in a quartet back in the day, and I know these books were special to him. I brought the stack home to stack in my own closet.
My mother kept an employee ID tag with her father’s photo imprinted in the bakelite. He had to wear it when he left the south and worked in a California rubber plant during World War II. I still want to make a necklace out of it somehow.
I brought home my mother’s and my aunt’s button boxes, which contained buttons from the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s. I use a few, but mostly I just like looking through them.
I could certainly understand keeping all those treasures.
But where in the world was the logic in saving some of the other things they kept? What were they thinking? I wondered as I made my way through stuff piled on stuff.
I encountered fat stacks of Walmart bags, all smoothed out into their original shape. Another closet revealed a bag of bags from McRae’s (before it became Belk), from JC Penney and from Ruth’s in Columbus. Who would keep a bag of bags?
Then I realized...Uh, I would. I have a bag of bags hanging on my sewing room door to use for bagging up old clothes I give to charities. I save Walmart bags to line small wastebaskets. I keep Belk bags in case I want to take something back and have lost its original bag.
Why did my parents have a stack of cardboard in a guestroom closet? Who would reuse such a thing?
Again I realized, I do. I actually have an identical stack of cardboard that I use in my art projects. My mother never, ever, threw away a card or an invitation to anything. There they were— all the Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day and anniversary cards and graduation and party invitations, placed back in their envelopes for protection and piled into drawers all over the house
I gave up being irritated when I recalled the drawers at my own house that are loaded with the same kinds of mementoes.
Their kitchen pantry revealed a stock of KFC containers that transported mashed potatoes and slaw, now washed and neatly stacked to be used for storing leftovers. I am guilty of the same kind of practicality that turns into hoarding.
The plastic boxes that the bakery goods thta Mother bought were saved to haul cookies or slices of cake to church functions. Never mind that Mother hadn’t attended a church supper since Daddy got sick in 2010.
I don’t keep those, but it’s only because I try to avoid temptation by not buying bakery goods, and I don’t cook anything of my own to haul off to a supper in a recycled box. The stuff I take to functions comes from the store in its own box.
In the arrogance of my youth, I had asked Mother a few times why she kept so much stuff that she couldn’t possibly use. She answered vaguely that she “might need it sometime.”
Old habits are hard to break. My parents grew up in the era of the Great Depression, when goods of any kind were in short supply, and they didn’t have money to buy them anyway. When you cut off a button, you didn’t toss it out. You threw it into the button box to save for the next blouse you made. You saved string and scraps of fabric and pulled nails out of ruined boards to use again. And you patched up the ruined boards if you could.
Thriftiness brought them the comfort that they would have something they needed when they needed it— in case the Great Depression came back.
So keep all the stuff that brings you comfort. It doesn’t have to make sense to your kids. They can throw it out when it’s their time to clean out your house, but you won’t be around to see the eye-rolling. And by then they may be glad you hung on to a few things.
It’s funny how time turns trash into treasure.
