This past week the girls and I went to Texas to help my parents start a downsizing process. They have generations worth of memories there, and it isn’t easy to decide what to keep, toss, sell and give away.
I’ve been a minimalist for much of my life. Good or bad, it is who I am. As a kid, I know I was a messy hoarder. And then I went through a minimalist phase which carried through my first years of graduate school. And then when first married, I went through another hoarding and acquiring phase. But then last year, I swung back to my minimalist-self, and we dumped half our stuff (including pics – tho not negatives!) in our move.
While we were in Texas, my sister joined us at the end of the week. She simply wants to keep everything. Every movie, every picture, every book. Of course, after years of hauling all of my stuff on interstate moves and then going through a big downsize last year, my opinion is different, but if she’d like to hold on to all the treasures, I’m not going to argue. One day, I might even appreciate her choice.
Either way, we all LOVED watching the slideshows. My dad, like me, takes lots of pictures. Apparently, he and I both love to take nature shots and pics of our pets. We watched rolls of pics of Charles, my parents’ cat. There were more photos of Charles than of me as a baby. As lovely as my dad’s pics are, I don’t know how many I should save (think of the cost to convert slides to digital pics).
We chose lots of pics to keep (my sister, planning to keep all, didn’t voice much of an opinion). My dad was a hipster before the term was invented. My mom was an incredibly lovely young woman, despite being a nerd 🙂 . They had awesome adventures. I love the photos…
But there are only so many that I need to hold on to in order to tell the story of their lives. And I tried to choose carefully. But, if my sister decides to hold onto the whole #! (inside joke here), then I’ll be able to correct my mistakes. So, go sis! (And I’m sorry I neglected to take a pic of your multi-chinned toddler gloriousness… 🙂 )
