Collection of Clutter

It was all precious memories, keepsakes and heirlooms… After three days of moving, it became stuff, crap, junk and finally just SHIT! As in where /what am I going to do with it all?

I paid good money for some of it or someone else did. I hate to throw away perfectly good crap, or pieces and parts that MIGHT come in handy some day. Somehow it got heavier, couldn't be me getting weaker.

I don’t have the budget to rent a storage unit as I know it will be out of sight, out of mind. Just like the last time I rented a storage unit when we moved from Central Florida to the Keys over 20 years ago.

After 10 years in non-climate controlled storage, the mold and mildew ate up all of our good junk we were trying to save and we ended up trashing it all anyway. But the storage fee was only $25 a month back then to keep kicking the inevitable down the road, that's why it went neglected for so long.

I'm not so much of a procrastinator but more of a take care of what’s screaming for attention now type. It's from being married so long. I don't do anything that I'm not excited about doing until I get yelled at repeatedly. It's a guy thing, mostly. Or I like to think so anyway, birds of a feather and all.

We are not the only ones in our circle that has more stuff than space and we're going to do a multi family yard sale in an attempt to feel better about ourselves for making the effort.

We will set up tables and display all our crap with suggested prices which somebody else will happily spend time negotiating and haggling over a two dollar and 50 cent teapot I paid $35 for.

I don't enjoy negotiating and haggling but my wife does. We have to do it soon before the rainy season otherwise we have to put up tents over the tables which would probably be a good idea anyway.

It will probably take a day to set it all up and then Saturday and Sunday to get rid of it all. Monday is garbage day for anything that doesn't sell and the Salvation Army/Goodwill doesn't want.

How much value can I assign to a ceramic clown bong handmade buy a fan after Jim Beam and I slept with her, in the band truck behind the Whiskey River? We were the house band for a year or so there… good times…

I have the heavy, glass pitcher engraved with my name that my friends gave me for my eighteenth birthday. It was full of Michelob beer with a pan pizza on the side. It was a lot better than that lame ass Mick Ultra fart water they sell today. Who wants to buy that memory with my name on it?

My wife has the samurai swords she brought back from Japan from when she was in the Navy. She's been saving them to stab me with when the time is right but right now, I'm worth more alive than I am dead as I don’t currently carry any life insurance. In a way, that is my life insurance policy, being worthless.

She has all her “fat girl” clothes from when she lived up in Tennessee before we even met. She's way too small for those clothes now but she was selling insurance at the time, so they're really nice, like a bank teller, “dressy” I would call them.

My mother’s generation liked to gift “Fine China” as if it were going to be valuable in the future. Bless her heart, I looked it up on the Internet and it costs more to ship it than it's actually worth. China is very heavy and nice to eat off of as gravy definitely doesn't soak through, but it’s too much weight for RV life.

With my luck, I’ll sell it for $20 and then somebody famous will make it valuable somehow…

I found every lost flip-flop and shoe that the critters dragged under various pieces of furniture that no longer have a mate, long ago thrown away.

We only lived there for 12 years or so. I can't imagine what it's like for somebody with a lifetime of accumulation or acquisition, depending how you look at it. Is it a collection or is it clutter?

Peace and Love.