Photographs of Memories
We started sorting through our stuff in September 2014. Very few things were kept. Most were… relocated.
Everything below is pulled from Facebook, to create a history of events before I started blogging on Oct. 1, 2015. Further downsizing details will be posted as they happen, on the Home page.
Wow. Lookit what I found while sorting through crap today.
If you were a journalism or graphics design sorta person, you used one of these back in the day. Now it’s a relic.
Remember? Anyone?
Next item to go through my downsize-o-matic: this basket full of our childhood… horrors. Clearly they’ve stayed too long at the fair.
The problem: now I’m not sure whether I’ll have more nightmares if I get rid of them or if I keep them.
Yeah, so Tim started sorting through his side of the closet today. Guess how I know.
Re-posted from Facebook – Sept. 13, 2014
Tim stands at attention in the bathroom doorway, holding his naval officer’s sword at his side, wearing only boxer shorts.
“Hey Honey,” he says. “Do you think we’d need this? For protection?”
I regard the scene dispassionately, “Guarantee you would not be the only guy in the trailer park with a sword.”
We kinda killed the paper shredder yesterday, somewhere between tax years 2005 and 2006.
Bonfire of the Documents makes the teenboy happier anyway.
The good news: He’s keeping these boxer shorts, a silly homemade gift that I sent to my Missiles Officer during a 1993 deployment. Why yes, they do say, “Ask me about my Tomahawk.” Because I was that Navy wife, right from the get-go.
The bad news: He’s also keeping his nasty, decrepit old high school wrestling singlet, which is now hidden from me, perhaps because his weight class was 119 (spelled out for those who don’t do numbers: one hundred nine-fucking-teen).
He’s still preoccupied with 1985.
Re-posted from Facebook – Sept. 15, 2014
I’ve come across a folder full of mimeographed assignment sheets.
I don’t… Why would I…? Wow.
My term paper for English 12, May 1987. I’m keeping it.
1. Typewritten. With footnotes.
2. Researched the old-fashioned way: by leaving the house, scrolling through microfiche in the basement of the library, writing to my elected officials for copies of actual bills and transcripts of testimony, attaching copy request slips to newspaper articles, and making phone calls to sources.
3. It has Mrs. Rephan’s writing on it, and she was a legend.
4. I got an A.
It’s kitchen day. That means I’m sorting through stuff inside 36 cabinet doors, 17 drawers, and a walk-in pantry.
I needed provisions.
And by provisions I mean empty boxes. Lots of ’em. Luckily, I knew just where to go for an amusing variety.
Re-posted from Facebook – Sept. 16, 2014
Based on the contents of our first aid supply drawer, I’d say I thought we were out of band aids, every month, for a year.
Re-posted from Facebook – Sept. 17, 2014
Melon Baller
Cheese planer
Nut cracker
Potato ricer
Get outta my drawers! Your services are no longer required.
Turkey baster woulda been on that list too, but I actually used it this week!
This. Is a keeper.
This tome was foisted upon me shortly after I became a Navy wife. In 1992, I thought it was annoying and irrelevant.
Now? Now it’s freakin’ hilarious!
Table manners. For the queen of chew ‘n’ show.
As if.
This landfill used to be our dining room. For the past month, it’s served as the staging area for our community-wide yard sale on Saturday.
And this isn’t even all of it.
Objective: To bring in enough cash to cover the cost of the yard sale permit plus the November RV loan payment!
This is Charlene, my giant metal chicken who was just not suitable for RV travel. She lives happily in suburban MD now.
Re-posted from Facebook – Oct. 25, 2014
We’re dirty, smelly, and exhausted.
We sold shit.
I said, “It’s a dollar” at least 400 times.
We took unsold shit to Goodwill.
We took unsold books to Half Price Books, where we are awaiting our cash bonus.
And we made enough money to cover about 6 months worth of RV payments!
Maybe I’ll use some of that cash to pay someone to vacuum all our newly vacant floor space.
Because seriously, ew.
Oh, Craigslist. What would we do without the entertainment value you provide with every sale?
This is how I informed our older son that we’d sold his desk.
I spent today pre-sorting the despised “7-Year Financial File,” not just for the new year, but for the new lifestyle.
Scan
File
Shred
Repeat
~ or ~
Spindle
Fold
Mutilate
Burn
Drink
Re-posted from Facebook – May 4, 2015
For better: cottage, hut, hovel, yurt, camper, tent, cave
For worse: big house
No more big houses. Or any structure with baseboards, really. Or wall-to-wall carpet. Or lots of shelves. And light fixtures can take a flying leap too.
(Says the wife spending her day working upstairs — where the air conditioner isn’t.)
My entire makeup collection now fits in this pouch.
I am not letting myself go.
I am letting myself be.
Tim has secured us a storage unit. We shall drop off our first load this very evening!
23 years
1 apartment
4 Navy quarters
2 rented houses
3 owned houses
And this is our first storage unit!
Re-posted from Facebook — June 23, 2015
Cleaning out the garage: how it goes
T: OK, go pack everything that’s on the router table.
E: Which thing is the router table?
T: <points>
E: <starts putting items in box>
T: Wait. No! Not that.
E: But you said “everything.”
T: I know. But not that.
Repeat eight times, or until Emily figures out a way to make it look like an accident — whichever comes first.
Today I start deconstructing and dividing what’s left of the kitchen.
Our plan is to switch our home base to the RV by Friday! Which is good, because we are down to one roll of TP in each bathroom here at the house, and I am so not buying more.
(Yes, we use toilet paper in the RV, but it has to be the flimsy “safe for RV and septic system” kind.
No further information will be shared on that subject.)
So I was loading a box of Dane’s charity give-aways into the truck, and I really did try hard not to look, as with both boys we took the “Your stuff; you decide” approach to possession retention and disposal.
But the contents shifted a bit, see? And I saw lovable, furry old Grover’s arm reaching up from the bottom of the box — an arm I’d recognize anywhere, under any circumstances — and I… I reached down to grasp it.
Grover stays.
Shut up.
I know.
Downsizing perk: We’ve boxed up everything we need to outfit our college-bound son’s bedroom, bathroom and kitchen — down to trash cans and salt & pepper shakers — without having to shop.
Move-in day is Sunday. Just hope he remembered to tell his roommates not to bring kitchen stuff!
We got this.
My daughter had that “Grover” book. She called him “Bubblegum Nose”.
I hope to follow in your “tracks” and downsize to an RV by winter, then hit the road.
Thanks for the tips.
And then I look forward to following your adventures!
Also, now I can’t unsee Grover’s bubblegum nose.
LOVE your writing style. You crack me up. Here’s to a life lived with less stuff!
Right back at ya! I’m looking forward to checking out your blog too.
Hah! I’ve used that same brand of proportion wheel. Kids these days (and how often have you said *that* lately?) don’t even know what they are. I’m tempted to demand that I be buried with my pica pole and proportion wheel. Probably a decent last use for both of them. Just found and enjoying your blog/sites/whatever. Not in an RV yet but planning for one.
Ahhh, and welcome to the Relic Club. It’s not so bad here. We’re all just sitting around waiting for acid wash jeans to make a comeback.
Glad to hear you’re enjoying our little slice of the internet!