Boxed Up Bushels of Desiccated Passions

Mom's Paper's and Misc.

 I finally got Mom's papers and misc consolidated from 11 boxes, three bags, and three shelves of various sizes into 8 bushel sized boxes.  I wanted that uniform look bad enough to empty several of those Bear Creek pear box tops of other things so I could use them for Mom's things.  I even switched the contents of one of Mom's bushel sized fruit boxes with a different label into one of these so they would match.  Aesthetics matter to me even when its mostly junk I guess.

Paper Sorting Station.
See Tomorrow's Sunday Serenity
for the story about that painting.

Here is the cubby desk and its cupboard after I pulled everything out of it.  The paper sorting set up on the desk there is for my papers.  I set the painting I found with others behind the file cabinet to block the ugly view as that is what I gaze at when I look up from the screen.

In the cupboard, bottom right is a boot box full of books I pulled out of one of Mom's boxes that had papers laid on top.  On the left are some fragile items I'll need to find better homes for or leave here if I can't.  The middle shelf right is a stack of empty three-ring binders.  Some were already in this cupboard but the bulk I'd pulled out of the one of the bigger boxes weeks ago, emptying them of the 'Alphabet Soup' papers destined for the recycle.  The left side contains a stack of empty file folders, pocket folders, three-ring binder tabbed dividers and report covers.  Same story.

'Mom's Alphabet Soup' was my affectionate name for all the councils, boards, advisory committee, and support groups that Mom participated in throughout the 80s, 90s, and right up until her broken hip and stroke in late 2008.  Tho she had slowed way down after Dad's cancer diagnosis in 2004.

I meant no disrespect by that nickname, it was my admission that I could not keep up.  I remember only BVI and AARP.  That last needs no explanation.  BVI was the Blind and Visually Impaired Support Group for which Mom was President for awhile and I acted as her secretary.  I created a database of members on my recently acquired multi-media computer in 1996 and maintained it until I left Longview in 1999.

I just realized something that is making me sad.  I've just made this room entirely my own with this makeover.  Tho Mom's stuff is still in here, little of it is on display.  None of it is where she left it except what is in her desk drawers, file cabinet and the long wooden cabinet my Great Books set sits atop.  But that's only because I haven't gotten to them yet.

My sister said that if what happened to any of the stuff in here mattered to me I should take responsibility for sorting it because no one else in the family is going to have the patience.  She like Dad before her envisions a dumpster when the time comes.

I imagine that for every bushel I sort through I might find a shoe box full of stuff worth saving and even that is a matter of opinion.  Mom was a collector like me.  She collected a lot of clippings from newspapers and magazines.  She was also an inveterate greeting card sender and receiver--still is.

But seeing it boxed up like this now makes too real the fast approaching time in which all of the things that mattered to Mom and few others will be boxed up...