Although I’m sure my husband wishes we’d finished, too!
My youngest sis, Frankie, came to visit yesterday evening. We went to dinner and discussed our plan of attack for Sunday. This morning we got up and emptied the books from my mother’s bookshelves. They are all sitting on the table I use in my studio, organized into subjects with three lines of books running from end to end. Frankie also set out pictures in all forms, and photo albums.
We went through a number of cabinets holding china, crystal, and pottery, culling out things from my grandparents, and things that my mother had painted when she lived in the Ozarks. I found my aunt’s bone handle sterling silver knives and added them to the growing collection of serving pieces and kitchen items.
Frankie watered outside, while I watered inside. I went out to sweep the walk. As we worked, the first of the kids arrived to help move Mother’s belongings from the basement to the first floor.
Ultimately we had one very tall (and handsome) newly-graduated-from-high-school boy, two VERY STRONG (and pretty) high school girls, and two young adults come to work for us. The five of them managed to bring everything I had tagged and more upstairs in less than an hour and a half. Everything was (and is) horribly dusty. I made them all promise that they would never admit that have seen my basement.
My aunt’s paintings and mirror, a picture of our very homely Uncle Charlie, linens, clothing, more books, tax info going back 30 years, decorations, old fashioned cameras, slide viewers, bears, candles and candle holders, everything that my mother has collected, and that we have been storing from previous generations was brought upstairs.
My siblings flew through about half of this stuff before we ran out of time for the night. This really isn’t my brother’s thing, but he picked up my two older sisters and brought them up here, so he couldn’t slip away. He’d get ensconced in the living room with Dear Husband and I’d call him back for a job. He’s going to go through a collection of pictures and see what of them can be translated into more modern video forms. We also found his baby book, his senior high school play book, and the yearbook from his stay at Great Lakes when he joined the Navy. There were memories to share with him.
My-Sister-The-Nurse is going to return on Wednesday to help me go through the books. Those that are left will go to the library that afternoon. My second sister will return to box up what’s left of the clothing, and take that off my hands. Tomorrow morning, if we can fly through things, we will look through twelve plastic storage boxes of quilt and craft things for Frankie’s girls.
There’s a HUGE amount left. Part of it will go into the garbage pickup. Part of it will go to a charity willing to come to the house to collect it, and part of it will be shredded by a commercial shredder. I won’t be able to complete all that this week, but I can minimize it throughout the week.
And then, the youth group will return to bring up the boxes from the business so that we can have the shredder clear them out for us. My house is going to be in an uproar for a couple of weeks, at the very least, but my goal is to have all the table space back by the time Scraps on a Mission meets at the end of the month. I’m sure it can be done.
Wish me luck! *G*