Storing Documents & Returning Photographs

In preparing to bring a shelf back to the house from storage, for our in-house storage room, I pondered why furniture shuffling never seems to end, and if it’s this way in other people’s lives too. I took a small pine shelf down to my study closet, which necessitated all sorts of shiftings.

There are many upsides to this latest tango:

• 90% of mom’s work docs are going to storage in waterproof plastic tubs. These are papers I’m not going to parse on my own, and don’t need them to take up a filing cabinet and a half in my small office closet at this time. I am keeping her records on the book she wrote, her professional time-line, and her resume. I discovered things in those files yesterday I never knew about my mom!
• Any docs relating to tools, household things or industrial equipment remaining on the Island will return to the Island.
• I now only need two 2-drawer filing cabinets in the closet, and they are stacked on one another.
• As I was reloading a file drawer with dad’s photo archives I came across the (very famous) name of a sculptor that I recognized. A quick internet search revealed that his studio is still where my mom’s notes said it was. I called him and he would LOVE to have the prints, slides, drawings and negatives returned. This helps send about 0.4% of dad’s archive back to those he shot photos for for decades. I know this is an unfinishable job, and trust me, it’s not something I have aspirations of completing. But here and there, particularly for the artists of my childhood, it feels really, really good to close the loop on their and my father’s relationship. To pass back something that was valuable to both of them.
• Ah, and the closet is SO much more usable now!