Should it Stay, or Should it Go?

There is a time when all good hand me downs must go. Everyone should get to own a new sofa they picked out from a furniture store and not someone's basement; or get a new washer from Sears instead of the flee market. Half my furniture comes from my dead grandmother and the other half is a mix of what my siblings no longer wanted and what my mother no longer cared about. However, once I start selling the items in a yard sale, there is little guess as to who will all the sudden want their items back... But I digress.

Preparing for a yard sale and then pulling it off can just be a precarious time. Trying to choose what should stay or what should go, and wondering where the hell some it even came from, is taxing to say the least.

 Every fiber of my being says all I need are the following:

 my recipe box and aprons,
my dog and his grooming kit,
the sundresses and flip flips,
2 light sweaters and my favorite pjs,
 my hiking boots and water bottle,
four good pair of underware,
two decent bras, the comfy socks,
two pair of shorts and two tanks,
my top ten favorite records and record player,
all the Amos Lee CDs,
the shoebox of all the cards/drawings/school projects from my nieces and nephews,
the 'box of love' from VBW,
a respectable sized box full of my favorite books,
my grille and my divided fry pan,
my memory full of photos of this life....

But then how do I part with the dining table that has been a part of family celebration dinners for 20 years now. Where do I muster the strength to haul out the dry sink that has sat in a Bortle home since 1979 and slap a $20 circle sticker on it. There is the trundle bed my brother slept in as a boy; the one his nephew Nick now claims when ever he comes to the Little Gray House. There is the daybed in the front room where all the youngsters have played underneth and read books by flashlight after great grandma slept it in it in the early nineties. What will become of the chest of drawers that once held my daddy's pj's that I now wear in the dead of winter or the depths of sadness. I look around this little house and realize I have the story of the Bortle family. My sister and brother can look around their home and see the story of the family they have created. My mother's house is void of the life she had before marrying her now husband. But I have the challanges and joys of the family which we came from stored in ever nook and craney in the very place I live and breath. It feels heavy here and I don't think I ever realized just how heavy until this moment.

Everyone is culpable in the collection of their own furnishings. No one forced me to take on these items. No one said you must be the keeper of the Bortle family album. I just worried about it so. Once Daddy died, who would bring us together at Thanksgiving and Fourth of July? I have just made a whole lot of myself in a time I didn't know what to do or what to become in my own life. So I became a curator of the Bortle family moments in time.  I now realize, I can hold that album in my heart; it is landscaped deep in my soul and human makeup.

I don't need items to touch. I have a family that loves me and friends that cheer me on.

But it still doesn't ease the decision making of what should stay or what should go.

Recipes: A good wine mixed with decision making is perfectly fine; particulaly when you have no idea what to do...you can always blame it on the wine.

Roadtrips: You don't have to take a souvenir from every place you have ever been; you just have to appreciate every place you have ever been.

Renovations: It is ok to become a curator of your own life.