Replacing the much lamented 'On My Mind' profile option, this thread is for musings, jottings, whimsies, preoccupations and the rest of the thesaurus for anyone to jot down anything they please.
I can't remember what the maximum character count was before, can anyone else? But anyway it wasn't very many so let's keep to that.
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!
Yay! I am happy that you found the beetle!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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!
😁
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.
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!
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.
I DID rent a storage space. It gave ne more time to go through stuff. I had to declutter my home to get it on the market. But I gave myself 6 months to finish cleaning everything out of that storage space.
The stuff that I kept (and which is now in my 2nd husband and my storage space) is mostly my kids' stuffed animals, books and stuff like that. My daughters were happy that I kept their (and my) dolls and dollhouse.
In terms of my mom's house, I was fairly non-sentimental. I hauled a lot of stuff to Goodwill and put stuff out by the curb. Word went out and lots of folks who looked like they didn't have much to their names showed up and took home goods. It made me feel good that kitchen stuff was going to be put to use.
At present I have lost motivation to even sort my desk.. but I will follow & cheer you on.
We are looking to downsize within a few years, kids don't want it need our stuff.
I can rationally think 'I never use that', or I don't need that anymore' but I still can't seem to throw it away 🙁.
DH is good at clearing out MY stuff but has his own... shed + garage piled with 'things that might come in handy some day'.
That is a creepy feeling! I don’t want to feel anything crawling on me! LOL
The cats will get them. My cat went after lizards in the yard.
Off and on, I have been doing a little bit of getting rid of things. It’s amazing what we keep due to it being sentimental.
Well, I had my husband help the other day. He took objects out of my hands and said, “Really? You want to keep this? Why?” It really helped! LOL
I want to know how people downsize for a ‘tiny home.’ Geeeeeez! I can’t imagine. Not that we are going to move into a tiny home but our real estate agent says that we should get rid of as much as possible to make our move easier.
I have decided that we are not going to pack up ourselves and hire professional packers. They charge by the hour. So, that is another incentive to remove as much as possible. We have a huge kitchen in our house and I removed bags of stuff just from the drawers. I still have the cabinets left to do. I don’t cook for an army like I used to when I cooked for my entire family and extended family. I had so many things that I don’t use anymore.
The other thing that I am concerned about is photographs. I have so many! Have any of you thrown out photos? I have too many. I am not a scrapbook person to do any of that.
I have things from my husband’s grandparents that I cherish but I don’t want to keep everything. The kids don’t want it. Not everyone is into antiques. Any ideas?
I have a huge attic that has tons of stuff in. It’s all got to go! Who knows if my daughters will ever have children? Do I still keep the crib, changing table, stuff like that? I kept them because I bought expensive ones but don’t those change as far as safety standards go and so on?
I have wedding gifts still in the original boxes! Beautiful gifts but I never used them. Some items I completely forgot about.
If anyone has been through this, please tell me what you did. I don’t think that I will miss things that I never use. Do I donate? Rent a dumpster? LOL or what? I am not a hoarder. I have a lot of space that we filled up over the years and inherited many items from my husband’s grandparents. I don’t think that I want to rent storage because like I said, our children have their own tastes and they have very limited space.
The other day sitting peacefully on my sofa I felt something crawly on my neck and swiped at it and it was a big black beetle -about 2" long with long feelers and legs. I know it came off me but I didn't see where it went. It must have come in on the firewood I had brought in a little while before. I don't know how it got on me. I took off my outer clothing and shook it all and put it in the basket for the laundry - not that those things couldn't survive a wash cycle or three.
I haven't found it yet so I guess we are living in some strange kind of truce. I keep hoping the kitties will find and demolish it, though they tend not to kill the bugs they find, just play with them.
Meanwhile, every time I feel something on my skin - like my clothing or my hair, I suspect a revisit from Mr. Beetle. Eeeeeew!!!!!!!
The older kids, at nearly 13 and 17, are in the process of getting vaccinated with Phizer, at their request and their father doesn't see a good reason to say no. They are both heavily involved in sports and do not want to miss games and mess up practice schedules again this year if they are exposed to someone with covid. There's a minor thought their vaccination could prevent the younger kids (and others who cannot get vaccinated) from possibly getting covid.
So far my family has been lucky. No one in the immediate extended family has gotten covid, although several members of the extended family have had covid and a couple has spent several weeks in the area hospitals. The worst was my uncle and aunt, who after delaying getting the shot, came down with covid in April and spent several days in the hospital. At their ages (75 and 72) we were very worried.
I think the CDC statement ‘given the risk of COVID-19 illness and related, possibly severe complications, such as long-term health problems, hospitalization, and even death’ was about Covid, not the vaccine. Thank heavens!
If I’ve got the maths right, my blood clot risk with AstraZenica is .003%, 3 in 100,000, and it isn't necessarily fatal. I think the Covid death rate in the US was a lot higher than that.
I saw that report. I am not an alarmist but I think the facts speak for themselves. Yes, side effects are rare. Still, side effects are reported and studied. I am glad that it is being taken seriously. I have had doctors tell me that they ‘practice’ medicine and there are no guarantees that things will always work out perfectly 100 percent of the time. Very true statement! It’s important to follow up on any concerns.
There will always be a chance of something going wrong in medicine. It’s concerning. All we can do is look at all of the facts, weigh pros and cons and decide what is the best option for our own individual needs.
The CDC in the United States considers this serious enough that they called an emergency meeting to discuss this rare side effect.
In Canada, the same side effect has been noticed, too.
In Germany, the government actually just announced their recommendation that healthy young people should avoid the vaccines.
As a parent of 2 teenagers, I should know all the risks and benefits before committing my children to taking the vaccines.
Here's from the CDC: “CDC continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for everyone 12 years of age and older given the risk of COVID-19 illness and related, possibly severe complications, such as long-term health problems, hospitalization, and even death,” the agency wrote.