Why are there boxes in my bedroom?
Well we've only been in this house 16 months or so... and as I grew tired of unpacking and trying to figure out where everything would fit, the inevitable box or two began to make it's way into my closet, under the bed, or shoved into a corner until I was in a better place to deal with it. The result is that our bedroom has been rather full of boxes I still don't want to deal with.
The lesson, of course, should be that if I haven't missed the contents of those boxes by now, I ain't gonna. Why not just scoop them all off to the Salvation Army or the curb or where ever useless stuff should be deposited.
There have been moments in my life when I've had that willpower. This weekend was not one of those moments. Instead, about 90% of what I had been refusing to unpack was sorted (sort of) and stacked neatly out in the shed where at least I won't have the daily reminder that I save too much crap. Some stuff did make it to the trash. A few items were deemed valuable and are now out and about in the house, sure to collect dust on a shelf or get kicked under a couch only to be rediscovered in another cleaning spree.
There were two big bonuses to event, however. First, beneath my bed it is now completely clutter free and my closet is orderly. No more boxes for sheltering dust bunnies. In fact, after all the dust I swept and sucked from the corners of my room and closet this weekend, I'm pretty sure I've raised the air quality in the room.
Second, I managed to consolidate a number of boxes containing old photographs, duplicate photos, and items saved for one scrapbook or another, into a single container. It's a large container, but somehow having only one large container feels better than having a dozen little ones. The downside was that it probably added an extra couple of hours, at least, to my cleaning efforts as I kept getting distracted sorting through photographs. There was one set, in particular, that I left at the top of the box to share. These are images that were originally on colored slides that were the bulk of my family's photos from maybe the late 50s to the early 70s. Most of them pre-date me, and since the originals are slides, they were kind of lost to our family photo albums and history for quite some time.
I had prints made about 10 years ago, with the idea of eventually getting them all in a scrapbook. What can I say? It's been a busy 10 years.
So I thought I'd start posting a few, primarily for the benefit of my children and my nieces (and nephew) who probably haven't seen many of these images. What good are photographs, after all, if we can't incorporate them into the stories of who we are and where we came from?
I was going to start calling these entries, Memories on Monday. But since it's Tuesday before I've gotten to this first post, I'm just inviting everyone to see. Feel free to leave a comment with any memories these pictures provoke. Don't be shy!
September 29, 1956
Duane & Jean (my parents)
There is a story about this cake topper that goes along with an entry I wrote last year. (By the way, my dad tells me that they knew all about the surprise all along and were just having fun messing with my head!) Anyway, as part of those festivities, I swiped this cake topper from the curio cabinet to give to the woman who was making the cake for the anniversary party. And I already wrote there about swiping photos from the wedding album so that the cake could be recreated. I still feel a bit anxious looking at these pictures. That cake led me to be more deceptive and secretive than I've ever been in my life!
I love this photograph even though it's a bit blurry and the details aren't fantastic. All the rice in the air makes it look a bit like they are being pelted with snow. And you can see that their smiles are just perfect, and the way they are clasping hands gives me a feeling of just how "united" they must have felt at that moment.
I would love to know more about who fixed up the car and all that was written on it.
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