Packing and Thinking

I worked on packing my MIL’s kitchen yesterday, and count successes by category of items packed and cabinets/drawers emptied. By the end of the day, I was hunting for things to top off the last three boxes. The few things left to pack are on a hutch. Everything remaining in the kitchen will be sold, donated or adopted by family. Books, 1.5 closets, a wrapping paper and ribbon collection, furniture, and some miscellaneous are pretty much all that’s left in the house. The carport closets need to be emptied, as does the workshop and garden shed. The end is in distant sight.

In all of the above, I’ve been bringing things back to our place, and am now feeling overwhelmed. Right now, in this moment, seven of our eleven rooms are in a state of flux due to the shifting of MIL’s belongings. I know it won’t always be this way, and I spend spare minutes trying to organize and consolidate.

All this leaves me thinking about the museum our belongings have morphed into over the years. As much as I’ve been editing, purging and donating our belongings over the past half a decade, it suddenly doesn’t feel like nearly enough. In part because there’s so little room to accept the items we do want from my MIL, and our kids will be looking at four generations, maybe five, of stuff to deal with, when the time comes, no matter how carefully we curate.

It dawned on me today that I am taking care of:

• Three houses,
• Two pole barns,
• Three classic trailers, and
• Five old outbuildings.

No wonder I feel overwhelmed…