Memento or Useless Item?

What am I doing today?

Well, I set the timer to make sure I spent at least an hour sorting through things in the garage and tidying.

There are four or five boxes of stuff in there that are full of things taken from my parents' house on the day we left it.  Liz is going through some old slides, seeing if there are some we should save.  My parents traveled a lot and there are a lot of pictures.

It's hard for me to throw things out.  I am sentimental.  And I tend to hoard.  I never know if I'm hoarding or treasuring a family memory.  I never know if I'm throwing out something that's of no use to anyone anymore or throwing out an irreplaceable memento.

Here is Liz's rule on the slides.  If' it's scenery with no people we know in it, throw it out.  If it's a good picture of Grandma or Grandpa or some other family member or family friend, keep it.  She keeps calling me, "Mom!  Look at this one!" or "Mom, here's a picture of Grandpa." or "Hey, Mom, do you know these people?"

But we HAVE gotten rid of a lot of stuff.

It's hard.  There's the step stool that always sat in my mother's kitchen.  We're all short.  We used that thing all the time.  It's so familiar that it feels like I should hang on to it.  But I have no room for it in my kitchen.  And, after all, it's just a step stool.

There's the chair my grandmother (my grandmother, mind you, not even my mother) always sat in when she played the piano.  My father kept it when she died and then my parents had it in their house.  Now that sounds pretty sentimental, doesn't it?  But my family room and living room are full of furniture that belonged to my mother and grandmother.  I mean, there's no more room.  I have given quite a bit to my adult children.... 

Maybe I need to remember that these are things, not the people themselves.  May my dear departed loved ones rest in peace.  May I keep what is truly important and discard what is really not meaningful to anyone. 

Sheesh.  This doesn't come to me easy.