When I lived in Southern California, I had a detached garage. In that garage were boxes of paperwork from my business, goods of my mom’s elderly cousin who I took care of for nine years. My mom’s stuff was also in there. It was packed.
Two years after my mom died, I attempted to clear out the whole garage. My friend Joe came over to help. He didn’t stay long because in the first half hour I found my mom’s birthday present for me. She died five days before my birthday and somehow that present ended up in the garage. It was a wind chime made from flattened spoons.
I put the present back in its wrapping paper, thanked Joe for helping, shut the garage door and went inside my house and cried. Hard.
I hadn’t cried like that when she died as I had to deal with everything we deal with when a parent dies.
Eventually the garage had to be dealt with. I began by hiring a company that shredded business materials with a chain of custody process. They came and hauled away roughly 20 boxes. I had waited at least seven years before I destroyed them for tax purposes (plus another decade) and it was a glorious weight off my shoulders to have them gone.
After that I hired a woman who helped people organize chaos. She came over and brought two guys to lift heavy objects. She had the fellows empty the garage out onto the entire backyard.
Then the hard work began. Separating the goods into: Keep. Trash. Give away/yard sale.
I had a box of every music book and sheet music that I used growing up. I hadn’t had a piano in years and when the organizer asked if she could have it I said yes. There are times when I miss that history of my piano playing but then I shrug it off.
Can’t keep everything. Right?
When the goods had been culled, I had someone else help organize the keepers. Everything was itemized and numbered, and even a map of the remaining goods in the garage and their placement was made.
That came in handy when I went overseas to Sri Lanka for an extended stay (that lasted 14 years). My valuables were shipped to my daughter, where she stored them for way too long.
My current garage has been sorted out four times. Just recently I decided to cull unnecessary stuff, once again; photography studio backdrops, the giant dog crate that brought my darling Rhodesian Ridgeback Toby from Sri Lanka to the U.S., a pop-up tent I used when I sold my photographs at local fairs, yadda yadda yadda.
I have a Go-Bag in the house in case of evacuation due to a fire. In the garage I found a plastic bin that had old film negatives and letters from my mom and my stepfather. I began to look through the letters and quickly realized that I would go down the deep, dark rabbit hole. Nothing else would get accomplished, so, as I had done decades ago in my Southern California house, I closed up the box. I added if to the Go-Bag pile in the house – perhaps never to be looked at again, yet saved from a fire.
After the recent Glenhaven Fire, I’m glad I put the “letter box” in the Go-Bag pile. That pile is bigger now because of the Glenhaven Fire scare. I added my meds, more cat food (oh, I would need a kitty litter box), added some more electronics, but didn’t bother with a change of clothes. I did video the entire house in case the whole place went up in smoke. There are a gazillion things that I would want to save but my animals and childhood photographs and the letters from my parents are at the top of the list. Makes it pretty simple when it comes right down to it.
What’s a girl to do?…continue sorting out the garage until it’s organized like my old garage in Southern California. Put away excess Go-Bag goodies, paring it down to things that would actually fit into my very small VW Bug. Organize!
Lucy Llewellyn Byard welcomes comments and shares. To contact her, email lucywgtd@gmail.com
