Deep Blue Dungeon
Actually, my dungeon is not deep blue. If it were, I might like it better. It does have a scary black hole in it that various bits of flotsam and jetsam float above. Kind of like spider webs. Oh, wait! I think they *are* spider webs.
Anyway, thanks all of you who have suggestions for how to get rid of stuff. I know there are at least a few of my five readers who are probably in a relatively similar boat. You know. You bought your house a gazillion years ago, right before you had your first baby. And you actually *like* your house so you have never moved. Or almost never. I know Dogmomster does not like her house (she’s moved once, within the neighborhood) but that’s a whole ‘nother story involving a certain ghost engineer and it is Dogmomster’s to tell, when and if she wants to.
The problem here is not so much what to do with stuff. There are a lot of places you can take stuff around here. Recycle Ann Arbor is now accepting old cyberbeasties and other lucky-shuckial crap without grabbing a chunk out of your wallet in the process. Maybe the city got tired of finding old stereos dumped in the parking structures? The Scrap Box takes all kinds of stuff for kids’ craft activities. It’s even close to my work. And I know that there are probably places I could take our huge stuffed menagerie.
And therein lies the rub. It isn’t just the [grown-up] beach urchins that don’t want to get rid of the stuffed aminals. In fact, one of them tentatively approached me a year or so ago. “Moom, you know, if you can find a good home for some of my aminals, it would be okay.” Like, really, Moom. It is okay. The truth is that I have just as hard a time parting with those old friends as anyone. They were active participants in our lives for so long. There are the Mice: Speedy Water Janet Pop Mousey Mushroomears, New Mouse, Bouncy Bow Pink Bow Blanket Mousey Mushroomears, Hisse, Purple Mouse, Crissy the Police Mouse. I could go on and on just with the blasted Mice! And there are all the others. Black Velvet, Squealy and Scrambly, Cocky and Crashfly, Softy Beanbag, Scree-scree, Jupy, and I’m fergittin’ who else. It’d take me all day to list them.
But I can’t get rid of them. Last weekend, we were walking around Mouse’s neighborhood in kzoo and we encountered a house with a condemned notice on it. I dunno what the story was but it looked like a pretty rickety affair with a creaky-looking porch and steps and some junk on the porch. And a pink stuffed teddy bear. Quite the worse for wear. No, neither Mouse nor I rescued the bear. Neither of us need any more stuff in any category and this bear looked like it might be carrying lice or scarlet fever or whatever. But we were both thinking about it and we had an awful time walking by that house. Whose bear was that? Where is the child who loved it?
So. I will slog through this long, horrible, ugly project alone. The stuffed aminals will be the last to be considered and I won’t consider them without their owners’ input. If y’all are going through some of the same kinds of dredging projects, do not get me wrong. I love hearing about how you are doing. Your challenges and successes and what you have done with stuff. Me? I had a dumpster in my driveway for about a month after the tree fell on our house and I was so overwhelmed by work and life while it was there that I don’t think I threw *anything* into it. Sigh. Onward.
October 6th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I bet I still have more junk than you do – and I moved once 5 years ago. The funniest thing happened in that move. I found a couple of bags of garbage (not the food type) stashed in the basement a few months after we got here. The neat thing is that the grand kids have fun playing with Uncle Scott’s Fisher Price Garage with the wooden people (that my kids could have choked on), Uncle Steve’s Lego collection, Aunt Sally and Sheila’s Strawberry Shortcake dolls, and Aunt Susie’s pony collection. Just some of the toys from the past. Don’t forget Oscar Goldman and his exploding suitcase or the 6 Million dollar man! I think Jamie Summers is hiding in a box too. (The bionic woman, remember?) Just come on over and take a look at all of this stuff. You’ll feel better when you go home.
October 6th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
eh, it’s not so much the Ghost Engineer who is haunting me, but all his Collections of Collections that have to be gone thru and disposed of. JHMK, how did he collect all that STUFF?!?!?! sheesh.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
COUSIN MOUSE is still at my house, with Puff the Magic Dragon, Grover, and my Miss Joanne Doll, that has hair that grows longer if you crank the thing on her back, ( but I tore that out when I was little, so she just has a hole in her head now, and o clothes on. 🙂 But Cousin Mouse still lives in Davids room in the Halloween Pumpkin bucket, in perfect shape too. He keeps Prilosec under it instead of candy now, and lets Christina play with it.
BOYS do NOT always part with stuff. Don is the biggest packrat. He has more stuff in my house than I do. He has his old bedroom jammed, and the Freak Chamber… ( the room under the family room in MY dungeon.) We sold his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at garage sale after we moved in around 1991, with some other guys from other collections. So, he went on EBay and bought everything he missed from his childhood, and then some…. and keeps it all at MY house. He bought Donna all the She Ra collection as well, castle and all.
After my oldest kid moved out, he now has more stuff in my house than me. But I keep Bumbles, (Dons first teddy bear), on my desk in my bedroom. Bumbles has been all over the world, like Iraq, Afghanistan and Bahrain.) Bumbles was once left in a dresser drawer upstairs at the old cabin at Houghton Lake, where Lizard found him. Ann was so sweet, she called me and mailed Bumbles to us right away, cause she knew how important a little bear could be to a little boy. ; )
Care Bears anyone? Doug had Bedtime bear from Aunt Suzie. She made sure everybody had Care Bears. Grandpa Gumper fixed his eyelid with glue on the workbench at Houghton Lake. An epoxy mix on a Campbells Soup can of course. We still have all our Care Bears too. My grandaughter has all the new mini ones in every color.
Most of my things have been deleted to my garage in totes, and boxes and more totes in the laundry room, cause I’m never there, and my stuff is in their way…… One day, if I ever go home again, I’ll visit my stuff, freak out at the magnitude of crap, and go take a nap. Jenny is working on reorganizing my house, so she is comfortable being the mom there which means I cannot find anything when I get home….
One of the cutes things we did save is Ratero, He is Mum-Rah’s bulldog with the spiked collar from the Thunder Cats collection. We didn’t sell him because when Don was little, he put Ratero next to baby Jesus in the Manger of the nativity at Christmas, to “protect” the baby Jesus from those “guys.” He gets wrapped up in tissue with the rest of the nativity every January, and carefully packed away.