On My Mind

Hi everyone! Just wanted to share my good news with you all. I received my breast biopsy results today and it is negative for any cancer. It was just a benign adenoma.

So thank you all for your prayers and well wishes.

God is great!

Need: I agree about it being the plastic surgeon's fault. I think that woman held the record, sadly, for having the most plastic surgeries. Crazy. I doubt if she achieved perfection, since her mentality was skewed.

TNtechie: You're right about downsizing. I had to live out of state with my late mother, who owned her own home. Long story short - she refused to leave, then took a health downturn, precipitating me to move in with her from 7 states away. She suffered a stroke, ending her life. As I had been living there for an extended period, my energy was zapped. Fortunately my husband was a great organizer and we emptied her entire house of possessions so that we could sell the home. We vacated the home, leaving the reactor's lock box outside and drove 600 miles to OUR own home. Difficult much? Yes.
I do understand purging your own items. The dress that your mother made sounds magnificent.

Need: I don't know how I got stuck donating those Life mags, other than the fact that my brother, who is an attorney, had to get home when our mother was near death, after her stroke.

EB: Oh, my! Scary for sure.

EB,

Heart racing moments!

I just got the shock of my life. I was on the couch watching a movie when I went to check on my mom in her bedroom. I did not see her in her bed and I screamed at the top of my lungs for my niece who came flying down the stairs. I was actually shaking and got horse from screaming. I thought my mother fell out of bed onto the hardwood floor. I did not hear her. When I checked her bed she had the pillow over her head and top of her body. Oh my if I ever survive all of this. I need a drink and I do not even drink.

Llama.

Geeeeeez! What a collection!

My brother stored things in our mother's house for DECADES. She lived in Massachusetts and he lives in California. So when I was living with her, having had to leave my Maryland home, he gave me the duty of donating his over 3,00 Life magazines. I had to beg the local MA antique shop to accept them, then lift the magazines into my car. They weighed a ton. I get to the antique shop, it had been raining buckets creating a mud pit at the antique shop, but someone the antique shop owner and I got them out of my trunk. That was tough!

I used to keep books. I must have had over 650 of them at one time. Now I read the book and then donate. Some I have given to a friend once I'm done with the read.

TN,

I enjoyed reading your posting. My mom was an excellent seamstress but I don’t still have my prom dress. I can describe it though, hahaha 🤣 because I loved that dress. It was a beautiful aqua blue. I loved picking out fabric with my mom!

I have my grandmother’s sewing machine that she bought from a door to door salesman! She gave it to me after I was married. Everything mom owned was destroyed in hurricane Katrina, so I didn’t inherit any of her belongings. Very little was able to be saved from her home.

I do like that you have your special memories all in one spot! That’s a great idea!

Me too! The whereabouts of that beetle would have given me sleepless nights until found!

Golden,

Yay! I am happy that you found the beetle!

Found the beetle. Thank goodness!

Books, need - I am finally tossing them. The library here used to take them but not now. We don't have second hand hook stores and the lovely big coffee table books aren't in fashion any more.

Downsizing is a big challenge. Downsizing the contents of my parents' house was difficult because they were taking some things with them (to MC and my home) as they moved. My mother was wonderful, having chosen the furniture she wanted to take for her room to what the room would actually hold. The only separate thing she wanted to take was her china cabinet and its contents which I made room for without a strain. My father was a collector and so more difficult and many things had to be securely stored during his lifetime. Turning to my own stuff has been a different challenge but I realize as I age it is necessary.

I have a memory chest of stuff that only has some value to me. I do not want to throw the stuff away and probably will not in my lifetime and keeping it in one chest makes it easy for me to view it occasionally and will make it easily discarded when I'm gone. This includes childhood crafts (mine own and other children's) and small gifts (like a cuff bracelet my grandfather made for me and some books). The beautiful dress my mother made for my high school prom is in that chest. My mother was a great seamstress and the dress reflects her skills working with good materials. I'm not sure whether I keep it as a remembrance of skills not generally practiced today or the fun we had planning and making the dress, but I have accepted I won't be discarding it.

I have better luck with things - if I haven't used it in a couple of years and can't see using it in the next year, it can generally go. I have more of a problem with some things for entertaining because I'm in a transitional form of life taking care of my mother. I have containers for pies so I can take four to a family potluck. A crockpot with a cover that allows you to carry the pot with a strap over the shoulder worked well for potlucks at work. I still use some of this a couple of times a year when our cousin's lunch is hosted in someone's home. I hope when I not tied down I will get back into church and club events and use them more in the future.

One of my big downsizing struggles is with my nice clothes. I have had jobs requiring strict business clothes and dressy business casual. Most of these conservative suites were expensive to purchase and don't go out of style. So far they have all remained in my nice walk-in closet because I may wear them again someday although I probably only wear an outfit once or twice a year now. I am much more likely to wear my long shorts together with a comfortable t-shirt or polo shirt.

I'm 57 and plan to move into my condo with care services available in 10-12 years when the grand-nephews are finished with college. I do enjoy being in the middle of the cooking, homework, and sports schedules for now. I am very lucky my aunt wanted her condo sold to me and my cousins offered it as a bargain after her death. Today it is paying for itself as I rent it to pay the mortgage. I know exactly how much space I will have there and periodically go on a "downsizing" cleaning with fitting into that space in mind. The hardest to let go of will be my pianos and organ... yes I have an antique upright grand piano I learned to play on in my bedroom, a more traditional piano in my living room, and an antique pump organ I restored in my living room too. The pump organ must go but I have almost convinced myself I can accommodate both pianos. If the arthritis in my hands allows, I will enjoy them too.

A fair time ago the fella I was then going out with was invited to a fancy dress party, the theme being Barbie and Ken. My fella was a bit of an exhibitionist, and decided to go as Transvestite Barbie. You can imagine, the full production, wig, falsies and all. Obviously I had to go as Cross Dressing Ken. It wasn’t too difficult, as I had very short hair in those days, never had much in the way of frontage, and easily fitted into a man’s shirt and sports jacket. I just painted on a neat little mascara mustache, and that was my Ken costume. The interesting thing was that fella was a scream, hit of the party, while no-one seemed to know how to take me. The costume was just a little bit too convincing!

Beatty! 😂 😆 😝 LOL, too funny!!!

My mom would not have approved! LOL MY kid would take Barbie’s clothes off to take a bath with her. Her hair would be a complete mess! My mom got upset because she was a bit of a perfectionist! LOL 😂 Mom would fix Barbie’s hair, and my daughter would throw Barbie back in the tub! I told mom to not fix her hair anymore.

My daughter took scissors to her best friend’s hair in preschool and this kid loved her so much he let her! She somehow got ahold of my sewing scissors and cut his hair which was blonde like Barbie’s hair. I thought she cut Barbie’s hair because she did that before too. No, it was her friend’s hair! His mom put a hat on his head until it grew back! 🤣

My daughter was something else when she was a little girl. She had a lemonade stand with one of her friends. I made the pitchers of lemonade and put out cookies for them to sell on one of our hot and humid days. She sold a cup of lemonade to a boy that liked her for $5.00 instead of 50 cents! I called the kid’s mom and told her that I was going to make my daughter give him his money back. The mom told me not to do that because her son had a huge crush on my daughter and to let him find out that he wasted his money. My daughter wasn’t the least bit interested in him!

Guess what my daughter majored in at her university? Business! She landed a position with a company shortly after graduating. Other people applied for her job and have worked there for years but weren’t considered for that position. She’s always been a go getter! She drove me crazy at times but those qualities got her to where she is today.

Barbie may well have preferred Joe as her boyfriend (if I had owned a GI Joe)... as Ken wore a lot of dresses at my place 😁 Sadly his feet didn't fit the heels but he did wear makeup. Barbie once suffered a bad haircut with the Play-Doh scissors but had that patch coloured with pink texta (an early adopter of the pink hair look). She may have also dated dinosaurs.

Llama,

Yes, I do remember her. She was a total nutcase! She was completely obsessed with Barbie.

You know, it’s sad. Actually, I blame the plastic surgeon for doing so many surgeries on her. They are supposed to conduct a psychological exam on patients to see if plastic surgery is done for the correct reasons. That was all about the almighty dollar with that surgeon.

Need: That's right about Barbie and her accessories. LOL. There was a real life woman who wanted to look 'just like Barbie.' I think that she was the gal who had every plastic surgery imaginable. Do you recall hearing about her? That's funny that you thought Ken was dorky.

Llama,

Barbie has more belongings than some people have! LOL 😆 She has a fancy car, a ‘dream house,’ tons of clothes and shoes, etc, etc, etc.

One thing that I didn’t think she had when I was a kid was a ‘handsome’ boyfriend! LOL, I thought Ken was dorky! My brother’s G. I. Joe was my Barbie’s boyfriend! Heehee

Need: *He* already removed the Barbie car and took it up the road to trash. Yeah, I kept very little. I just located some of my hair that my mother had saved from when I was 8 years old - threw it in trash without hesitation. Your DH is very smart to say that about "a deal."

Llama,

Very smart! We can’t keep everything. It’s too much. Even if it’s organized well, it’s excessive. We fall into the rut of, ‘What if I need it one day?’ Items are stored away so long though, we forget we have them! Or, how about the excuse of, ‘It’s such a good price, I better get this now while it’s on sale.’ My husband says, “It’s only a sale if you need the item!” I am coming around to his sense of logic!

Need: I was overrun with greeting cards! My mother loved to send them. As a result, I had her's and my own. As now I use a greeting card company to rave reviews by my recipients, I just donated all of my supply. No need for them.

Recently when we got EVERYTHING out of the attic (and that wasn't the first time we had done it), the strategy that I used is I looked at everything very fast/quickly - else if I looked carefully at every item, I would never get finished and I would keep a lot - far too much!

We had our DD's Barbie car - in rough shape. I asked DH where it was, but it already removed it from the house and put in a trash bin.

Okay, what about books? I have a hard getting rid of books.

Golden,

It isn’t a fun task. It’s hard to stay motivated.

Llama,

Don’t get me started on cards! 🤣 Geeeeez, it seems like I have millions of cards!

If we are honest, we will admit that the more space available, the more inclined we are to fill it up.

I have a friend that went through the extreme coupon savings! She became very proficient with it. She had her huge walk in closets filled with her items. She had enough products to donate to the military troops, the homeless shelters, her church and so on. It took hours for her to do this type of couponing. It’s like a full time job! Eventually, she stopped doing the extreme couponing because it was consuming all of her time and her closets were full!

Golden: We have DD's things for p/u that she probably won't want - or will. I mean if you haven't seen the item in DECADES, you forgot that you even possessed it, right? Good luck.

I just found my cards given to me when I was an infant. They were almost falling apart, just like me.
😁

For me downsizing is difficult. I am tackling it a bit at aa time.

Need - 3 piles -donate, toss and keep. At some point a dumpster can be useful.

Like others I have things that my kids and grandkids don't want. In a spare bedroom, I am getting down to the old family photos, which ideally I would scan and send to each of my kids, but life is not ideal. The other spare bedrooms are fairly well sorted. I'm accumulating some things in the garage for give away. It's not a fun task.

Beatty,

Yes, this is true. Men aren’t as sentimental about our belongings and they keep weird stuff! LOL

I dearly loved my mother in law. She told me the funniest stories about my husband when he was a young boy. My husband had a key collection as a young boy. He took them everywhere he went. He was fascinated with keys. He would carry them in his pockets to try to open doors with them. LOL

One day, his mom took him to buy clothes from a department store. They arrived a few minutes early and were waiting outside for the store to open. Sure enough, he reached into his pocket to get his keys to try and open the door. His mom was used to him doing that and of course, he was never able to unlock a door and it kept him busy as a young child. This particular day, his key had unlocked the door! His mom was floored! Hahaha 🤣 She had to explain to the manager that her son collected old keys. He still has that key collection in his nightstand drawer!

Thanks, Barb.

Your advice is exactly what our real estate agent said, that we have to set a time limit on it. Otherwise, it is too easy to procrastinate and not get the job done.

I have a beautiful doll house in the attic. I have some dolls that my oldest daughter loved as a child but she hasn’t taken them. My youngest daughter hates dolls and clowns! LOL She says that they are creepy and isn’t having any part of them. She never played with or collected any dolls. Although, she did take a few Barbie dolls in the bathtub with her. My mom would pitch a fit because she ruined their hair! 😆

Thank God that I don’t have a basement! Basements can hold a lot of stuff! Just like garages. Some people don’t have room for cars because of all the junk in them.