Have you read the book by Marie Kondo,
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up?
I have begun tidying up and I'm starting to feel the magic, although at this point, mostly what I feel is dry hands and sore muscles.
I think by the time I'm through, I will have touched every item and piece of paper we own. I'll spare you the gory details, and just show you some of the things I have found.
The pictures taken during years of our marriage (42+) have been condensed into about four photo boxes. Although there is a whole decade of images on my computer, but that's a task for another day year. Some of you will remember the days when we took our chances with the photos on the film in our camera. So every picture was developed, usually in doubles. I used to save nearly every picture, good, bad, fuzzy or otherwise. I have been ruthless this week. For the most part, I don't feel the need to save scenery pictures. A few representative pictures of events have been saved, as long as there are friends or family included in the picture. Along the way I found some gems.
Some made me laugh.
This is my friend, Dotty. She taught me to quilt. This is the mascot of our local triple A baseball team. I think we were in a skybox for the game and the mascot dropped by... I sent this picture to Dotty. She claims to not know the person in this picture. Ha!
Pictures of very good friends, Jessie and Val, and Val's now-husband, Matt. These pictures brought back memories and such a good laugh. Those are my red boots, by the way.
And a bit of sadness. Here is Sue, such a dear friend, mother of Jessie and Val, no longer with us. She is holding Charlotte (who is now 9) in that bottom picture.
One of my favorite pictures ever. Our son, Aaron (now 37), with my grandfather.
If you are old enough to remember Toni hair permanents, you might vaguely remember that every year, the company chose a set of twins, the first ones born in the new year. So my cousins, Gwen and Beth, were the Toni twins of 1953. Their parents received lots of gifts from the company that year.
Gwen, Beth and their sister Sandy
I found some professional photos of the fused glass Mark used to make.
A "Glassy Quilt"--Mark made the frame and I made a 3" mini quilt and did a bit of beading.
Mark also made custom dinnerware. So beautiful....
We used to be vendors at quilt shows, and this sign was on the door of a hotel gift shop. Weird hours. Why not just say 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.?
When Aaron was going to optometry school in the Portland area, and he and Christa were expecting Charlotte, they posted a picture every day as the countdown to the due date grew closer. So if you are reading this and live in the Portland area, you might recognize some of these signs.
My friend, Jennifer, makes little personalized signs each year when we attend the quilting retreat sponsored by our local quilt shop. I'm missing one year. But I know I'll find it when I tackle the sewing room. The quilt shop gives us each 1/2 yard of focus fabric to make a project and Jennifer always adds a strip of that fabric to the card. It's a fun added touch.
You can tell that 2009 was the year Twilight was popular and everyone was trying to figure out which character they were.
The year Jennifer was taking Spanish lessons and so our signs were in Spanish
And I found this cross stitch pattern. I think we all have this kind of day once in awhile.
So do you hang on to things? Or do you find joy in decluttering?