Opportunity Cost

If you've ever bought something for a specific use and employed it successfully for that use, then stored it and kept it and moved it and eyed it and moved it again, workshop to basement to barn to storage to yard...think about it.

That item probably owes you nothing at this point, and paying it homage by paying to move it across country is a fool's errand. That thing has done its job and needs to cycle its way along the path. Craigslist or Freecycle come to mind as great avenues of disposal.

The recycle dumpsters and 1-800-GOT-JUNK come next.

Don't try to realize any money at all...don't expend your time and effort but throw your remaining resources into getting the things into someone else's hands.

The story so far

I see that I have not been here since last August. Then Phil had a stroke in January, which he is just popping right back from, thank goodness!

That leaves many silent months in between, but we are finally out of the ice age of this winter and raking the gardens and yard and finishing up the sorting in the barn. We've ripped and torn our way through 9 boxes of Mom's papers that we were going to pay to shred. Now we will toast the names and addresses in a fire circle and recycle the de-identified cartons of chaff down at the recycle bins. I spent time this morning moving boxes in the barn to make it neater (in case the 'buyers' wanted to see the inside of the barn without having things look too disorderly).

The daffodils are in bloom, and we were blessed with a visit from Jenn in March.

We are also crossing our fingers and hoping that the couple who looked at our house today for the second time! like it enough to send us an offer this week.

Today was nice and warm...60s fahrenheit...and I also took the time to pick up some dead branches from the back yard, so that walking back there was not hazardous. Having a soil of heavy marine clay means the yard is as full as a sopping sponge in the spring, especially after two heavy rainstorm-y days this week. Flood watches everywhere, but we are on a high rise, and if anything gets wet in the backyard it will not reach the foundations of the house.

It is becoming a lovely spring. I am eager to finish the barn and attack the basement again.

One thing that has been interesting this fall and winter is how well we are able to live with the four plates and six bowls and several mugs that we saved out from packing. Well, a little more than that, but not much. It does not make me wish I owned less, however, and when we get to open the boxes at the mythical new house, it will be like Christmas.

I just hope it won't actually be Christmas-time when it happens.

Goodwill Sorting

We've gone through all the linens and towels and made a couple of boxes for Goodwill. I hope they take pillows!

Next, on to catalog the things we will be giving to the church sale.

In the course of the project, we found some ratty-looking fabric pieces that turn out to be old bean sacks! They have faintly-visible printing that extols their virtues as "seamless". I guess they are a leftover from the Great Depression. I was going to cut them up as dish towels, but now I will find some better use for them.

Antique velvet

This afternoon, I delved into some pretty-much-destroyed boxes that had been caught under a roof leak in Mom's attic years ago. They still contained their treasures: burgundy velvet, black velvet, and so on. I immediately ditched the leatherette and pieces of leather, which were too far removed from their origin that they were not even interesting. There are some small harnesses, which appear to be dog harnesses. I also ditched the metal zippers that had been harvested from garments long ago. There were two new zippers (using the term "new" advisedly; they were still in their original packages), which I kept, as well as a dandy descriptive sheet that showed where to use the new "slide fasteners" in garments.

I especially like the patterns. The packages look much as Simplicity, etc., patterns do now. The charm is in the markings: "Virginia, Spring '44" and "checked 12 '44; 15 pieces, all here". The pictures on the envelopes are simply priceless. So I'll go through them more thoroughly at my leisure, assuming I get some leisure some time in the next 25 years.

Phil is generously allowing me to keep fabric remnants from my mother's projects...I recognize some of the fabric. I'm keeping ALL of the fabric that must have belonged to my grandmothers. Too cool to dispose of right now...it all evokes the poetic in me. Perhaps it's false nostalgia, perforce, because I wasn't there..., but I think it's my inner magpie, fascinated by the novelty of a connection between life a hundred years ago  and life now. Actual, physical life, that is, or the remnants thereof.

Thank you, Minnie and Irene and VIC (Ginny to all of us...). God rest you merry.

Treasure Hunt Continues

This week, we have come across original drawings that *I* had never seen before done by Phil at RISD. There's nothing in the world like drawings IN PENCIL and ON YELLOW TRACING PAPER!

Sure takes me back.

And for your entertainment...

Today, we resumed sorting through the studio. It has never had the privilege to be used as a studio, and has been a repository of all things family that came in from Laconia, Charlestown, and so forth. After we clean it out, we're moving the bedroom in there, so we can clean out the bedroom and paint the floor, etc.

Some of what we found:

P's grandparents' 50th Wedding Anniversary scrap book, a scrap book that perhaps Georgia Cheney kept (1889+), many pictures of all and sundry, a recipe book from 1931 (suitably austere, though the cover is red).

P sorted through photography equipment from college days, drawings and plans also from college and from Hughes Associates, a circuit board (perhaps he designed/drafted it?) that was not "printed" but wired in layers, many obsolete road maps and a geodetic survey map(s)...patched together...of New Hampshire....wallpaper-wise.

B sorted through boxes of boxes, all neatly labeled, and not used by their boxer since 1960, which is when my maternal grandmother died, she who did the boxing. Such delights as feathers for hats, ribbons, lace collars, and other fabric things. I thought to enumerate them here, but I have not yet actually LOOKED through them, saving that pleasure to enjoy with Barbara S and Sarah W sometime soon.

Oh, yes, I found more books...Volume II of Queen Hortense (I think I already gave away Volume I), Michener's Poland, The Story of the Pilgrims for Children, and others. Not as fun a box as the box of Nancy Drews, but more material for the church book sale.

The boxes labeled "purses" actually had purses in them, meaning that I had already sorted through those once. So we're getting there, in the studio.

As I worked my way through the boxes of boxes (sewing and fabric pieces, etc.) it occurred to me that much of that material had probably been sitting since maybe the early forties. I can't imagine my grandmother doing much sewing after my mother went off to college and marriage, etc. And then I spent a few moments musing on how clothing wears out. Remember, that my mother and I KEEP our clothing, even when it does not fit...we gifted many many pieces to Goodwill after she died. But wearing clothing out...the usual worn-through dungarees, elbows, cuffs, and collars...and clothing MUST get worn a bit in the wash and dryer. Why else would there be such a handful of lint to remove from the filter before every load? So clothing that is not terrorized simply washes away, gets thin, and goes into the ragbag. Well, not much as gone into the ragbag in my tenure. It's mostly still in the closet. 

That's another conundrum. After living in this house without a closet for so long, we build an addition 6 years ago that included a fine closet. But I have no idea how to use it effectively. Is that a reasonable excuse? No, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I ran across the box of buttons again today, too, ready to go through with Sarah and Barbara. quantities of shoe buttons, bone buttons from navy whites, etc. I sorted through them some years ago...at least, some of them...but it will still be fun to look at.

I'm enjoying these careens down memory lane, even when they're not my memories. I don't know why it's so difficult to get started on each sorting stint, but it's a lot easier when I discover that I've actually gone through and sorted it some time ago!