I went "home" the other day - "home" being the house I grew up in where my dad and sisters still live. They've got this massive project where they're cleaning out the attic, which we've been using for storage. Looks like we've got too much stored up there and it's starting to cause some cracks in the wall so they're throwing a lot of the crap we've stored up there over the 25 years we've lived there out.

I'm a horrible packrat, keeping memorabilia in shoe boxes and folders in crates, thinking that one day I'll go through them and get misty at all the memories I've had, only to be put away again back in the attic. I went over the house to check out my share of accumulated crap and to throw away the things I really don't need and just keep the essentials.

Damn, I had a LOT of crap. I was there for 4 hours and I'd only gotten through 1/3 of my stuff.

But what stuff it was! It was a wonderful trip down memory lane, bringing back memories that my poor little brain has chosen to keep buried deep inside. I knew a lot of this stuff wouldn't fit in our new house (and Dave is the OPPOSITE of a pack rat...he rarely keeps anything!) so I knew that I had to throw a lot of it away. It was sad to part with a lot of the things I found - old candles from formals in highschool, pages and pages of letters from highschool and from friends, old movie tickets, dried flowers, etc.

I did keep a lot of things, like all my old pictures that I had hanging up in hand-decorated picture frames, postcards, my old art supplies, and other stuff that wouldn't take up too much room in my new place.

It's a bit sad to let go of a lot of these memories, my memory is so horribly spotty that I need these things to reawaken old feelings and remind me of good days gone by. But I'm entering a new stage in my life, so I feel a bit better about putting these things to rest.

I did, however, take a couple pictures of some of the things that I was going to throw away before they got launched into that big black hole of a hefty garbage bag...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles button (featuring my favorite turtle, Donatello), Belle figurine, my first pager (that I really don't remember ever using), book of matches from PSA formal '97, Cozumel fish key chain, Christmas ornamants that we passed around during a party to have decorated...

My ex-boyfriends old bumblebee fuzzy slippers...if you're out there, Henry, they're going to a better place...

Little Mermaid button collection, duck-bill straw, Psych Grad School stuff (I was thinking of going, then decided I never want to go back to school again), my prom date's bow tie...

Potpourri pillows created during our girls' crafting night, a gift wrapped, empty box with a poem on the front, and my ever present Pochaco photo wallet...

Glass from PSA formal '95, glass from AAA formal '97, glass from PSA formal '97, glass rose from Sweethearts Dance '90....

I think there was a ton more crap that I threw away without taking a pic of them, but these are the ones that i felt I needed to have a visual to remember them...

Posted by Yano at March 23, 2006 04:52 PM

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