Things we old people must do - beginning at several years in

Just as our parents did before us, Hunky Husband and I have been in the process of winnowing the stuff that is in our home. Understand, please, that we combined households in 1990. We have been in the process ever since then! They who start with much stuff need to rid themselves of much stuff. The first appreciable amount of stuff to go was furniture and household items to furnish a small apartment in which HH lived from 1991 until he retired in September 1993. Boeing had sent HH to work in Philadelphia as the Blah Blah Blah Executive on the Comanche helicopter program. When he retired and came back to Kansas, he gave Bogie (our younger daughter in New Hampshire) whatever pieces of furniture she could use (and cram into her 4Runner) and nearly all of the rest to a charity. That was a load out of the house!

At some point in the 1990s, I winnowed through the 21 boxes of papers that I had dragged behind my 1972 Buick Electra in a two-wheeled trailer when I, myself, returned to Kansas from Albuquerque. I eventually got those 21 boxes down to 3 or 4. But, the stuff in our home did not monotonically decrease. When my mother died in 1994, Younger Brother brought his GMC from California to load up with TV and furniture that he wanted from her house. A young cousin brought her covered pickup truck from Missouri to load up furniture, dishes, and stuff that she wanted from Mom's house. We held an estate sale; but, all of Mom's boxes of paperwork and family photographs came to our house! At present, I believe I still have 3 or 4 boxes of her paperwork, including the book and cards from her funeral and the financial records I kept while settling her estate.

After I retired in 2004, I started a concerted effort to shovel stuff out of the house; but, it was a distasteful job at which I worked very little for the next 10 years. My biggest accomplishment was giving away all of my pottery and art glass equipment and supplies to vacate the smallest room in our basement. (That room is now stuffed to the gills with sewing equipment and supplies - moved out of a larger room in the basement that I commandeered as my new bedroom.)

Now, at "going on" age 81, I'm getting serious. My clothes closet is 1/2 empty (yay!), and I've emptied two 2-drawer filing cabinets. One cannot tell by looking, but our kitchen has seen the last of many dishes and cooking vessels. Slowly...very slowly...I've been working on ridding us of a lifetime of cards and letters that I've saved since I was a small child. (I am now working on letters from 1963.)

Since we have a large store of wax and vinyl records, CDs, and magnetic tapes, plus a large number of VHS tapes, I have started the process of media disposal. All of our wax and vinyl records and the equipment on which we used to play them: up for grabs. Bogie has (wisely) said, "No, thank you." Dudette and WichiDude are to come to the house next Saturday to peruse our surplus.

The above photo shows the equipment that is up for grabs. Mind you, I cannot assure you that any single piece of equipment in the photo actually works. I do recall buying a new diamond stylus for the turntable that is to the left of the Heathkit tuner/amplifier. It seems like I did that a couple of years ago; but, I am pretty confident that it was actually about 2013 or so. Whenever it was, it turned out to be in vain. At that time I discovered that the amplifier with which it was hooked up (don't believe it was the Heathkit) no longer worked; so, there everything has sat!

Below is what our record stash, also up for grabs, looks like.

Note that, on the top shelf are some 78 rpm records, including (in the brown box) a set of Morse code practice recordings. On the 2nd from top shelf we see, on the left side, a small portion of our collection of magnetic tapes. After we finish with the vinyl collection and equipment we will worry about tapes and CDs! On that 2nd shelf, however, are one cream-colored and one red-colored boxed set of Glenn Miller recordings. (The rest of the stuff, including the white box, are old greeting cards.)

The bottom two shelves have vinyl recordings - 45 rpm over 33 1/3 rpm, as you can tell.

If we can't give everything away, I have the business card of a guy who may want to buy the records. Would I be cheating him to ask a penny for each record? Of course, he may not wish to go that high. Maybe we'll be lucky and WichiDude will back his pickup truck to the door and load everything up. After that, it would be his problem - not ours! *giggling* If only!

P.S. I nearly forgot to mention another time at which we made major progress in ridding ourselves of stuff - in December 1999 when we moved into this house leaving mountains of stuff in the old house. Eventually, I had a basement sale at the old house during which I sold everything possible, including my violin (in the family since 1923), amateur radio equipment (HH's since before I met him), a pool table, a food freezer (and, oh yes, a refrigerator), sets of collector plates (some of which had been Mother's, others with which she had gifted us over the years), etc. I had previously given away a couch and too much stuff to remember.

Comments

[Ole Phat Stu]

I can SO identify with that, CC!
When I came to Germany (1969) I had just two suitcases (clothes and a dozen photos).
Now the house is filled to overflowing; even the walls are full (paintings etc.)!
I admire your discipline in throwing stuff out. We need to do that too.

[Ingineer66]

Have not heard the name Heathkit in a long time. Vinyl is back in style. You may get more than you think. We had friends of our daughters stay a few days with us last winter and they discovered the record collection in the guest room closet. He is a hobby DJ and asked about some of the records from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. We gave them to him and got a nice thank you card and consumable gift in return. It was a win-win and a new generation gets to enjoy them.

[Cop Car]

Stu--Stuff multiplies while we sleep, I warrant. You had a whole dozen photos? Don't throw those away when you achieve the disciplined state required to start throwing stuff out.

Ingineer--I've posted before that, when we were dating in 1957, HH's and my first spat resulted from my ignoring him when he came to my apartment. I was enthralled in assembling a 20-watt, mono, Heathkit audio amplifier. After marriage, we fought (had deep discussions) on who got to assemble the various tuners, amplifiers, tuner/amplifiers, speakers/cabinets, and TVs from Heathkit. The last kit that I recall working on was a color TV/console; but, HH assembled the tuner/amplifier in the photo, above, and its twin with which he gifted me while we were divorced.

All--Wichidude spent an hour in our basement sorting through 45 rpm vinyl records. He, being a slow and methodical guy, made it through maybe 10% of them, selecting to keep about 1/3 of those. Despite the fact that we have always stored those records flat (instead of, correctly, standing them on edge as we do the larger diameter records), and our records have been moved at least 15 times (including storage in very probably not climate controlled warehouses three times while we looked for or built a house), WichiDude handled those records as though they were precious jewels - even swaddling them in clean paper within the box in which he took them home. Of course, I gave him a hard time over that! At any rate, Wichidude has promised to return (several times) to finish the job. Dudette noted that on the record listing I had emailed them, there were 929 entries for 45 rpm records, alone. [That is not 929 musical pieces. Each entry was for one physical record which usually contained two musical pieces (Sides A & B), but sometimes contained four.]

WichiDude is looking forward to finishing off the wax & vinyl records so that I'll let him start on CDs and magnetic tapes!

[Joared]

This is what I’ve been procrastinating doing, but have long touted we should do for our kids. Along with a variety of music recordings and tapes I have books coming out my ears to part with — also professional documents I should shred. Intended to get into this after my husband died, but unexpectedly got side-tracked by intro to internet.

[Cop Car]

Joared--How much, if any, extra effort was required of you when your husband died to cope with stuff that he hadn't gotten around to sorting out? Was your husband a neat freak when it came to record/stuff keeping, sparing you some effort?