Mom's Treasures

I have been very stressed, losing lots of sleep, and shedding a few tears lately about getting mom's house ready to sell, but we have been making some nice progress. The main floor of mom's house is looking good. The main floor bedrooms (including closets) and hallway are completely empty, the hardwood floors have been replaced, and each has a fresh coat of paint thanks to my brother in law Bob "painter extraordinaire". (Thanks a million Bob!) Some replacement windows have been ordered and delivered and I can't wait to see how they'll look. Mom would have loved how the house looks.

The living room was empty until we started going through things in the upper floor. The upper floor consists of a den (the "blue room"-due to the blue carpet that had been in there for years), a smaller bedroom, a half bath, and a larger bedroom that runs the width of the front of the house. It's pretty good sized due to the large dormer on the back of the house. The steps and each of the upstairs rooms had been packed to the max with stuff. Mom loved to shop and loved a bargain whether she needed it or not. That wasn't the point. The point was that it was 50, 75, or even 90% off! It was the thrill of the hunt! It was exhilarating...like a drug. She would buy multiples of the same thing if it was a good deal. She spent hours and hours shopping on the weekend. Many times mom and I would shop a little, stop for lunch, and then I would need to go home..I would leave mom at the mall and pick her up hours later. I always felt this was better than her sitting in the house all day...at least she was getting out and getting some exercise. As soon as she would open the car door, she would say, "Don't be mad at me, but...". She would be pushing a cart FULL of stuff. I would have to load it in the car, drive her home (usually with a stop to pick up something for her dinner), and carry all the packages up the 14 steps to her house. Even though I would get irritated sometimes with all the packages, I felt, and still do, that there were worse things she could have been doing with her time and money.

First of all, let me just say that even though she bought things inexpensively, they were very expensive things. She had wonderful, expensive taste. Think Daytons, Mill Creek, Marshall's, HomeGoods, Macy's. Think Ralph Lauren, Coach, Dooney & Burke, Liz Claiborne. Because of this, she didn't want to ever get rid of anything. It was "too good" to just give away. So instead of getting rid of things, she would just ask us kids or the grandkids to bring stuff upstairs. This went on for years and the upstairs got more and more cluttered. The funny thing is that she would tell us where to put it upstairs and she knew where everything was! It was amazing.

As we are going through mom's treasures we are seeing some interesting patterns; some interesting items...

First of all she has hundreds or stamps, stamping pads, and cardstock. She also has anything you would ever want or need to became a professional scrapbooker. She has made a handful of hand stamped cards and as far as I can remember she had made 1 small scrapbook. She would joke that buying stamping and scrapbooking materials was her hobby, not using it! I have cleaned out one full closet at my house and have filled it mostly with scrapbooking materials. I figure instead of selling it for cents on the dollar, we might as well keep it and get together periodically to create beautiful books in memory of mom.

She had decorations and paper products for any holiday...Easter, Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, 4th of July. Any holiday that had merchandise that went 75% or more off would do. Who cares if we didn't celebrate them....75% OFF!!! There are boxes and boxes of Christmas tree decorations and wreaths, Easter bunnies and eggs, Halloween ghosts, witches, & scarecrows, and 4th of July flags and paper products. Looking to give a gift for any holiday? She has gift bags, tissue, gift wrap, ribbon and cards for any and all holidays...hundreds and hundreds of them!

There are hundreds of cookbooks too. She would say that she read them like novels! Kind of comical for someone who rarely cooked and I can pretty confidently say that she never tried a new recipe she found in a cookbook. She had whole sets of professional pans and cutlery also.

She had about 15 sets of Ralph Lauren sheets (some still in packages), many hand sewn quilts, 5 brand new Clinique eyebrow powder sets (which she bought to get the free gift sets), boxes of purses, tons of totes, and she must have really liked wooden fruit and eggs because there are lots!  Some of her things are out of style now and other things are "classics" that will never go out of style. We found 10 bags of wrapped caramels, 2 bags of tootsie pops minis, a tin of life savers, 2 plastic cases of melt away mints, and 2 boxes of candy canes....all of which had an expiration date of 2-6 years ago, but they were CHEAP!  She had many organizational items...from bins to tins...all of which were unused. While looking in an old dresser, I found an unopened piece of mail from 1973! She hated to get rid of anything.  

Every time Brian works upstairs he plugs in a little Christmas tree (one of many that are up there). When I asked him why, he said he likes it plugged in because it reminds him of "Grandma". While it can get overwhelming to wade through all of this stuff and it irritates some of my siblings, I try to look at it as sort of a treasure hunt. The things remind me of Ma which I find comforting. When mom was sick and would start to worry about all the stuff, I would tell her that we would worry about it later....I knew she really wasn't up to it and I didn't want to stress her out. Well it's now later, but I guess I would do it the same if I had the chance.