When I first arrived at my mother’s flat, after she passed away, I went through the drawers and cupboards, wardrobes and file cabinets to do an initial sweep of clearing out.
We had moved her a couple of years earlier but nothing had been sorted, just packed in boxes and stored in the garage.
I threw away papers from 40 years ago, clothes, pictures, christmas cards and furniture.
It took months, I was methodical. My parents weren’t really hoarders but for some reason my father had kept every receipt from every holiday he and Mummy had taken; all his bank statements for decades; Barclaycard bills and life insurance brochures from every major company in England! I disposed of several broken vacuum cleaners, a film cameras the slide projector, the large family tent, and a host of framed pictures wasting away in a suitcase.
There isn’t much left to clear out now that I am once again turning my attention to whittling away the last of the stuff I thought nostalgic enough to keep six months ago, in preparation for packing up to go home.
I began with the bottom drawer of my desk where I had put all cards, photos and legal looking papers, death certificates and funeral arrangements of close family members, to await deliberation. I decided that most of their photos had been sent to them by me and they could be shredded. A few cards from the 80’s with news of our doings, could be kept, pertinenent information on the whereabouts of my grandarents’ ashes could well benefit from investigation, if nothing else I’d be able to record their place of final rest in a future scrap book . I did keep the papers my father had kept from Beirut and Iran with Arabic and Farsi writing on them, blasts from the past and interesting if nothing else.
Hubs joined me in the sorting and shredding of photos.
This relatively easy assignment, one meagre drawer, took us three hours!
Looking around the gargage when we took the shredder back I said,
“You’d better get started here, judging by the length of time it’s just taken us to clear out one drawer this will take a few days.”
“No!” he said, “couple of hours at the most!”
I’ve seen the bags and boxes of tools. It will take more than a couple of hours!
We’ll see!
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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