Things

 I always find it odd that contestants on Wheel of Fortune choose things as their bonus round topic... Why? There are trillions of things in this world....everything is practically a thing!  Then I think about all the things in my house....Once again, everything is a thing. Why in the world do we need so many things. Being at the end of my tenure on earth, I 'm thinking a lot about what will happen to my things. My kids don't care about my things, my grandkids don't really care about my things and my husband doesn't care much about anything...OK maybe his things!  Sadly, I still have my Mom and Dad's things and some of their Mom and Dad's things.  Basically, my point!  I made the monumental decision to start donating, throwing, burning and paring down all things.  If there are trophies, credentials, certificates, awards and paper memorabilia, I will be photographing them and organizing them in to a Shutterfly book that I can hand to my grands.....which they will inevitably hand to their grands and it will be thrown away in the 2070s. At least I will feel accomplished even knowing the destiny of those artifacts. 

 I Just found my grandmother's high school diploma.....from 1910.  Various insects and time have air-conditioned it. I covered it in clear plastic! For what? My mother kept everyone's marriage, graduation, engagement, wedding, birth and death announcements from the newspapers. Ok, there's a page in my book....maybe.....I don't even know who some of the people are!  

Pictures- here's where it gets really tricky. I have gone to such lengths as using a magnifying glass to see if the folks in pictures from the early 1900s look like any relatives I remember.... That was a certain waste of time. If there is no identification on a photo.....it's gone! There are few actual interesting pictures from that time period. Most folks look alike and nobody carried a camera on their adventures. I do have a photo of my great aunt and her pals smoking in their bathing suits and another of an unknown family member standing next to a giant hanging shark.  That's about as adventurous as it gets.  I'd really like to find photos of my relatives stealing horses with the Rockefellers or some back room politics at the state capitol with my great grandfather.  Assuming they were intelligent enough not to photograph those events.

Most things in this house, if out of sight, would be out of mind. As I peruse my desk, I can count 17 things I don't need and haven't used but have been here for years.....3 rulers, 3 chap sticks, 2 candles I have yet to burn, crayons, flash cards for the US states, my father's paperweight and ashtray, a needle and thread (seriously?,) 6 pens, 2 bottles of lotion, a rock, lavender spray, a penalty flag and a miniature pitchfork...WTF!  See, things...and that's just one area of one room.  

Things are described as a material things without life or consciousness and something that could be an actual object of thought.... So for the next month, I will be purging many of the objects without life or consciousness in this house.  I am keeping body parts off the list for now but hey, you never know, if it has no life (or use) it will be out the door. Even people aren't safe here anymore!