Cleaning House

Okay, I admit it.  I am a pack rat. I do not think I belong to the hoarder category yet, but I could easily fall into the category.

I used to joke that I had a genetic trait that did not allow me to throw things away. My parents used to keep everything. Until, later in life, when they decided they had an obligation to their children to ready their home for sale when they died. They upgraded, remodeled, and cleaned out what they could in preparation for their deaths and when we would need to sell the old home.

But, they were not as wise as they should have been. One example, the baseball cards. We had a bunch of baseball cards in a shoe box, and they went away.  My sister married someone who was a baseball card collector and my parents realized those cards that went away may or may not have been of value.

But after that, my father threw out a lot of other stuff, including our Erector Set http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erector_Set  and electric trains http://www.lionelstore.com/?gclid=CIfguI7alrUCFcyiPAodDnUAWw.

My parents had our record collection. It included music from my parent's era, and music we collected as pre-teens and teenagers. The record collection survived. Some of the siblings took their choices. Rather then let my mother dispose of it, I took everything no one had expressed interest in. This record collection included the clay 78s, the 45s, and 33s (vinyl) recordings.

Some of those records have no meaning for me. But many do. Slowly, I am recording them on CDs so that I can preserve them, and share them with others. But, I am keeping them all, whether or not they have any meaning for me. 

I have a lot of things that I do not need.  But it is difficult for me to clean house and get rid of them.