I love Pearls Before Swine; I read it every day. I particularly like today’s strip…
While I am not a person who has kept a life-list of the books I’ve read, I am a person who used to think that my stuff was so good that of course my kids would want it! All of it! And that they would treasure it all as much as I did. Sad to say, that’s just not the way it has worked out.
It’s not true of everything. Our kids do have quite a lot of the furniture, dishes, etc., that we have moved on from. But there has been much more that they have said no to when I tried to give it to them. At first, my feelings were the tiniest bit hurt, but I got over that very quickly.
In the same way that I have some wonderful things from my Grandmother’s house and from Mom’s, there is a whole lot more that I happily walked away from. Why should my stuff be any different to my own kids?
What we do now is tell the kids to put their name on what they want. The rest I’m weeding through and making go away as the spirit moves me. FYI: I suspect that this fall I’m going to be putting some of my ‘famous’ quilts up for sale. I have run out of room for them and they need a good home. I’ll wrote more about that in a few weeks.
PS – Stephan Pastis did give me permission to show today’s Pearls Before Swine in my post. How cool is that, that he replied!
Piece O Cake Blog 
My whole top floor is waiting to be sorted also. What to save, toss, donate. What am I waiting for?
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Time to do it, probably. Just like me.
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When going through my mother in law’s stuff after she passed away, my sister in law was having a tough time parting with stuff until my husband reminded her they were “mom’s memories, not necessarily yours”. It made things easier. I am trying to simplify. My criteria is “would I care if it blew away in a hurricane ?(we live in Fl.) and would I have to replace it? Sometimes it is just easier to close your eyes, pitch, and not look back!
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Amen to that! While I would hate it if all my stuff was suddenly gone, there is a little part of me that thinks it might be very nice to start over with a clean slate. So, yes, I’m with you 100%
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I’m going through this stage now–and it’s extremely hard. Things too valuable to just give away, but who really wants what I have accumulated? ab
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Becky – I came to the same realization some time ago. I’ve gotten to the point that I rarely ask them if they want something I no longer want to keep around. There are charities that benefit from my stuff and that seems like a better place for it.
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Same here. It’s a win win to pass on what you don’t want any more to people or a charity who can do something good with it.
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I’ve been sorting through my mother’s things the last few weeks, so the comic strip really hit home. There are six of us “kids” and we have all selected items that had some personal meaning or memory, but there are also so many things that are valuable and have no interest to any of us. We had a yard sale and were happy that a lot of her friends and neighbors purchased items that they said would always remind them of Mom–it made us feel so much better to let things go, but know that they will be new memories for others.
Now I need to start unloading some of my things–I know my sons have no interest in about 90% of it–lol!
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My mother advised me to ask myself if it would matter to anyone else in 100 years. If “yes”, then keep it, If “no”, then toss it. I do ask friends with similar interests on certain items, but otherwise I usually toss it. I’m trying very hard to live a minimalist life, but don’t seem to be able to pass up new quilting gadgets! Guess I’m addicted to those.
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I’m also still buying the occasional new quilting gadget, and fabric (of course). But I also weed out my gadgets and stash on an annual basis.
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Since I know I won’t use up my stash of fabric before I pass…my kids will have some fun & fancy polishing cloths for their cars. LOL!!!
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Timely topic for most of us I suspect. Recently this bulb went on that I was keeping a lot of things of my kids stuff…and they don’t want, why should I? Not an easy answer but I am working on cleaning out and purging too.
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I read something today, I think from the NY Times, about services that help older people clean out their stuff to downsize. It’s a business, and apparently a profitable one. Once we get good at doing this ourselves, there may be a 2nd career out there :-).
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