But there was a lot of stuff that we knew had to go, so we got to work. As many of us as were available helped Mom mark all the furniture, clothes, dishes and sundries that she wanted to take to the new place.
We had three days.
On Sunday, Mom and I measured the footprints of all the furniture she thought would be needed in the new place, which had two large bedroom, two walk in closets, two large bathrooms, a front hall and big, open living/dining room and a lovely porch, not quite large enough for a dinner party but plenty big enough for coffee or lunch. It’s a lot of space but we still needed to weed out a two level home with five bedrooms and two living rooms. Our work was cut out for us and we had to be ruthless.
Okay,Ihad to be ruthless. My Mom is filled with ruth.
Armed with our list of furniture measurements, we headed over to the new apartment. I had not seen the actual floorplan yet and I was amazed by how truly massive the place is. There isn’t room for either of Mom’s enormously long couches (she had two that are well over eight feet long) but there was plenty of room for lots of seating, a gorgeous diningroom table and about half of their book cases. The master bedroom is so big there’s room for their huge bed, two full sized dressers and two arm chairs, in addition to the large closet. The second bedroom is more than ample for Dad’s office desk, file cabinets, paper shredder etc. and Mom’s sewing station and a second TV set so Mom can watch movies while she sews. The closet is big enough for more of their book cases and all Mom’s clothes.
Once we’d made the list of furniture we could take, we headed back to the house to start marking it all.
That was the easy part.
Monday, we started sorting through all the dishes, glassware, stemware and cooking supplies Mom has collected over the last six decades. Keep in mind, these are people who entertain a lot. Even when it’s only family, Mom has enough dishes and glasses to serve 40, both on summer weight plastic and fancy china.
She’d given it all a lot of thought and had a working plan for how to dispose of it all. She knew what she wanted to keep and was more than happy to hand the rest down. As for the extra sets of everything, it will go in a chest that will be stored in Andy’s basement. Andy and Vi have taken over Thanksgiving for the last several years so that seemed the best place for it, especially since they have a basement that goes on for miles and can easily sport one more chest. Anyone who needs the extra place settings for any reason can contact Andy to borrow it.
In addition to kitchenware, Mom and Dad have been given a million gifts by their kids, grandkids and great grandkids over the years. Oh, and friends have given them a lot of stuff, too. The job of deciding what they could live without was yuuuuuge.
To make it easier on the movers, we stuffed everything that Mom wanted to take along into the large armoir she was taking. Every little knick knack had a story attached and Mom had a blast recounting these stories to us.
“Oh, Margy gave me that for Christmas when she was six. She stole the money for it from Joey’s piggy bank. I love this. Oh, JP madethat heart for me when he was ten! See this? Joey defaced it by drawing a TV set on it with ball point pen before JP got a chance to wrap it. He beat the tar out of Joe for that. I love this! Oh, that’s the knife Dad brought home from Spain. Joey talked Billy and Andy into fighting with it; Billy used the knife and Andy used the scabbard. Good thing I caught them before they started. I love this!”
Hoo, I’m just glad Mom didn’t save the body cast Joe spent most of 1973 in. She threw it away when they moved out of the house on Queen in ’04.
Just kidding!
She didn’t keep a body cast around for 31 years!
She got rid of it when Joe joined the Navy in ’88.
Anyway, the problem wasn’t the sheer volume of stuff, the problem was that Mom stopped working while she told the stories and we didn’t have timefor her to stand still; she’s the only one who knew what was gold and what was garbage! I finally told her that if she couldn’t keep working while talking, she’d have to be quiet.
I was shouted down.
Many hours later, the priceless knick knacks were all in the armoir, ready to move, the rest of the kids had gone off to other things and it was just the two of us, in her closet.
My parents are not clothes-horses.
They’re hoarders.
Dad still has clothes that he had in the 70s. He hasn’t worn them since then but he’s still got them. Some of his things had been hanging unworn for so long that we had to vacuum the dust off them to identify whether they were still in good enough shape to be donated to Goodwill or tossed in the dumpster that will be coming next week. He’s also lost a ton of weight since his fall, so most of his pants were three sizes too big. Those, we just chucked. The man deserves clothes that fit, even if he doesn’t care if they’ve been out of style since the Reagan administration. We saved all his totally sweet Stetsons, which he rocks like a boss.
Dad’s side of the closet was a breeze compared to Mom’s!
She had a six foot long rack in her closet stuffed so full with pants that it was hard to get them out. Every single hanger had at least two pairs hanging from it. We’re talking pants in every color of the rainbow, from cotton to corduroy to silk to rayon.
“Criminy, Mom!” I said. “You’ve got more pants in here than I’ve had in my entire life!”
“And I made every single one of them.” She smiled proudly.
She should be proud! Mom is a tiny woman with long legs and a short waist. She gave up trying to buy pants that fit decades ago. She developed a design that fits her and has all the elements she likes: slash pockets and an elastic waist, roomy, nice drape and a smooth silhouette beneath her tunic length tops. I swear, she's so good at whipping up pants for herself she could make a pair after breakfast to wear to lunch with her friends. Oh, yeah: she had multiple tops for every single pair of pants. Mom always looks good.
The few items she owns that she didn’t make, she bought in every color they came in. She likes corduroy. She found a corduroy jacket at Land’s End that she liked. She has it in light blue, dark blue, Kelly green, black, brown, pink and deep red. Why not?
The Great Mumsy Lang always said “When you find something you like, that fits: buy it in every* color!”
Wise words, no doubt but it does make going through the closet a daunting chore.
Plenty of the clothes were old; if they were out of style or she didn’t love wearing them, we put them in the ‘donate’ pile. If they were frayed or worn looking, they were allotted to the dumpster.
Finally, after what felt like weeks in that closet, I gave Mom three seconds to give each item a thumbs up or thumbs down. If she loved it, we kept it but if she hesitated, we tossed it. There were many tops and jackets that she knew she wouldn’t want to wear again but the buttons were so great she knew she’d reuse them. So we found the seam ripper and I spent a bit of time removing buttons from old jackets and shirts. When we started the job, I felt like an archeologist (the dust! OMIGOD the dust!!) but soon I felt more like a prospector and we found plenty of gold! In the form of silver buttons, that is.
At the end of the day, we’d filled eight large kitchen bags with clothes for Goodwill, marked a waist deep pile for the dumpster and she still has enough clothes to wear a different outfit every day of her life if she lives to be a 132.
And she made darned near every one of them!
She did throw out all her old swim suits, so I felt we scored a moral victory over materialism.
Tuesday, I took it upon myself to go through the bookcases they were taking.
Both my parents read nonstop and Dad is usually working on three at a time. That way, he doesn’t have to bring his book from room to room with him; he just reads whichever one is at hand. I actually started doing that a few years ago. It works!
There are many authors that they both love and they’ve got all their titles. Vince Flynn, Georgette Heyer, Louis L’Amour, Daniel Silva, David Baldacci, Robert B. Parker, W.E.B. Griffin, R.F. Delderfield, Maud Hart Lovelace, David Baldacci, Maeve Binchy, James Herriot, Michael Connelly…the list of authors Mom is positive they’ll read again goes on and on. Dad is 91 and Mom is 83. I love that she’s sure they’ll have time to reread 17,000 novels.
She did let me recycle all the Janet Evanovich titles. She doesn’t think she’ll reread those.
She let go of Stephanie Plum but Mrs. Pollifax and Maisie Dobbs still take up several shelves.
I removed all doubles. I removed any outdated political tomes. If Dad hasn’t read Karl Rove’s book by now, he’s never going to. No one cares anymore about anything Karl Rove has to say. I filled eight brown paper bags with books for Goodwill. There were still too many books left in the shelves to fit comfortably.
And those were just the book shelves they’re taking along. Downstairs, there are several more giant cases stuffed with books. Most shelves are two deep. I told Mom I’d love to take those shelves, as I can really use them. She told me I could have them but that meant I’d have to do something with all the books, too.
That’s fine! But that’s a job for another day.
Wednesday morning, Heidi was there to supervise the move.
A little bit about Heidi: a cheerleader in high school, she was voted ‘the girl most of the guys had a crush on’ at their tenth reunion. Drop dead gorgeous and by far the funniest girl in her class, she’s also the toughest human being I know. Her husband (my brother, the professional warrior) is no match for Heidi. For example: the day before she supervised our parent’s move, she had surgery. I asked her how she was doing and she said “Oh, I’m fine. I told the doctors whatever they were going to do to me had to be today, since we have chemo** tomorrow.”
She and Mom had a cup of coffee together before she threw Mom out, telling her she’d just be in the way; let the movers do their thing.
Fourteen hours later, Mom was allowed to walk through her new front door and it all looked and felt just like home!