We did more packing on the weekend — finished the epic book sort, and packed away some non-essentials like knickknacks, photo albums, and some art. We also filled another couple of boxes full of “give away to charity” stuff.
I’m pretty impressed at how good I’m being about giving stuff away, stuff that just 10 years ago I thought I’d never, ever, EVER part with in a million years. I think the secret is that, now that we have a house and a kid, I’m starting to get all the stuff I’ve been storing in my mom’s basement for years delivered up here. My mom is a total pack rat — she keeps EVERYTHING. She’s been sending up boxes full of a) every toy I ever had as a kid, b) every essay, project, and note I ever took in school as a kid, and c) dozens of books of the “teen heartache” variety. I find it interesting that she is much more emotionally attached to this stuff than I am. I look at a box of old toys and think, yeah, the Captain is never going to play with those Pretty Ponies and I don’t really care about them, so off to charity they go. My mom looks at the same box and thinks, Pretty Ponies! You used to love those! You can’t get rid of those, no way! You must cherish them forever!
I think part of the reason she’s so into keeping our stuff is that it reminds her of when we were kids — happy memories for her, but nothing special for us. But more than that, I think her attachment issues stem from the fact that her mom, our grandmother, was not a keeper. She’s a streamlined woman who, I’m assuming, kept very little of sentimental value from her kids’ childhoods. Probably my mom grew up and found out that her mom had tossed out her baby clothes, her dolls, and her grade 10 essay on Julius Caesar, and was pretty pissed about it. So, now, she overcompensates by keeping every thing her own kids ever did.
Ironically, it is turning her daughters into complete non-pack-rats, people who are able to get rid of tons of stuff because we have to — I don’t have space to store all this stuff, I don’t care that much about it (those essays, in particular, are pretty freakin’ embarrassing), and it’s all really, really dusty. I did keep a few little things, but the majority is going. It’s sort of like the cycle of life — one non-keeper begot a total pack rat begot a non-keeper. Interesting.
TurtleHead 
Actually, I don’t think mom is that bad of a pack rat. I think you’re getting these boxes because *you* never threw them away.
One thing I’ve always really appreciated about mom is that she’s always had total respect for our privacy and our belongings. She’d *never* make the call whether something of ours should be tossed — she leaves that to us. Plus, she doesn’t even like to go through our stuff to determine what the heck is in those boxes because she respects our privacy, and I think that’s awesome.
My father has “the back room”. The back room is a room in my parent’s basement that is meant purely for storage. My dad installed shelves on all the walls for this purpose.
Over the years, however, the shelves started to really fill up. This is a result of the fact that my dad is a grade-A, certified pack rat.
3 lawn mowers (only one fully operational)? Check.
5 wine racks from the 1970’s? Check.
20 car fanbelts? Check.
150 mesh baseball caps with no special significance? Check.
A broken bandsaw? Check.
So because the shelves started to fill up, he began placing stand-up shelves directly in front of the wall shelves. And more stand-up shelves in front of the those shelves.
The “back room” is now basically a solid room-sized cube of inaccessible crap.
This has served as great motivation for me to not be a pack rat.
Okay, I have to say I agree that mom is totally not a pack rat when it comes to her own things. All the stuff clogging up her basement is mine or one of her other daughters’. And I do appreciate the fact that she wants me to go through my stuff personally, because on the rare occasion she has delved into my boxes, she always seems to zero in immediately on the absolute most embarrassing thing in there!
But I think that storing my stuff for so long has turned her into some sort of curator of the “Lynn museum” and now she thinks that just because I was too silly/sentimental to get rid of that stuff in high school, it’s invaluable in some way. Every thing that gets sent up to me is accompanied by a lecture that includes the words “isn’t this *fantastic*?” and “now, don’t you go throwing this away” and “we’re not like Nana, who gets rid of *everything*.” It makes me feel pretty guilty when I can hear her voice in my head saying, “Oh no, you’re *not* getting rid of *that*” every time I put something in the “give away” box.
Scary, scary stuff. I guess your parents will never, ever be moving! I confess my mom is definitely not that bad — her own basement is pretty packed but it’s all with stuff that belongs to her kids.
Your story reminds me of when we moved sirmonkeypants’ parents — they had three giant dehumidifiers in their basement (among thousands of other things). I think two out of the three actually worked, but they hadn’t been used in years. Naturally they made the move. Eeek!
Well, that’s true. She does feel that Nana is an over-purger. (Man, she’s die if she knew what I get rid of. I think of the 4 of us, I’m the biggest purger. That comes from having such a cold heart — I have no concept of sentimentality.)
But the humidifiers aren’t nearly as bad as the Sony radio that made the move. Especially after the 15 minute discussion we had about how it was useless. My points of not keeping it were:
it’s main features were the shortwave bands (SW1 and SW2)
it only ran on batteries or an external AC-DC adapter which we didn’t have anymore
it had analog tuning
it didn’t work anymore
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