Picture books and memories and estate sales

Some reflections on dealing with 40 years worth of collecting stuff.

We’re in the process of down-sizing. Again. This time, though, we’re cutting our possessions down to, basically, what we can carry.

Clothes and technology for our upcoming daily life as world travelers.

Emotionally, this is very stressful for me. There are a few underlying issues in WHY I get so attached to physical possessions and most of them relate to my bizarre and mobile childhood but the reasons aren’t especially important.

The house is under contract with a closing date in 30 days and a 2 week ‘cushion’ of post-closing occupancy. Which we hope to not use the entirety of, but, I’ve been around the block a few times — If you plan for no delays or problems, there WILL be some of at least one of those things. That guy Murphy wasn’t wrong.

The estate sale folks were here yesterday to begin the sorting and pricing process. Super weird to have strangers going through your stuff and sticking price tags on. Surprising highs and lows on what I would have thought things were worth; we assign value with some sentiment or emotion that only really exists for US. The person who is looking at buying the item doesn’t care even a little bit where I was when I bought it or what kind of mood I was in or who I was with. The backstory is irrelevant to 99% of our stuff. Except to US; WE care about the backstory.

Things that I thought should have tangible value apparently don’t and seeing a $5 price tag on something that used to be important to me is jarring. On the other hand, things I would have priced at $10 or $15 are stickered at $65 or $100. Super weird to experience.

We have 2 pieces of furniture that my wife is emotionally attached to. One being her desk that I custom-built for her and the other being an antique wardrobe she bought in England in the mid-80’s. The wardrobe was not an expensive item; she probably paid $30 for it. But the story…. she LOVES the story behind the purchase and it resonates with her. Neither of the kids wants it and it’s a pretty big item so we will end up selling it. Unlike most of our stuff, we’ll make a profit, too. So, there’s that.

What has been most shocking to me — and shouldn’t have been at all, honestly — is the amount of ‘memorabilia’ we (Okay, I) have purchased over the years that’s never really been displayed in our home or even looked at a second time once it was purchased. I have books from museums and guidebooks from towns and maps and coffee mugs and shot glasses and little tchotchkes and on and on. Most of which have spent almost their entire existence in boxes.

Some of the books were on the shelves in our house in Redmond and even some (a small percentage) of the knick-knacks and gee-gaws were in the china hutch or sitting on a shelf somewhere in the house for a while. We packed that stuff into boxes, put a bunch of boxes in storage for well over a year, moved the boxes into a Conex container when we bought our current property 7 years ago and have been rediscovering them the past couple of weeks. Seriously, I had boxes of books and travel souvenirs that had been packed up more than 7 years ago and not been reopened since.

So. Much. Stuff.

I have spent literal thousands of dollars on mementos and reminders that never actually meant anything or reminded me of anything because it was stored away in boxes.

Some fairly expensive individual items as well — I have vases and artwork picked up in my travels that cost hundreds of dollars per item that will now sell for pennies on the dollar because they aren’t well-known and popular artists that have some renown. Maybe the glass blower is famous in the part of Australia where I found his work in a gallery but that $200 vase is worth $5 — $10 in an estate sale here.

There is discussion about storage possibilities. People helpfully suggest “You could put some of your stuff in storage” Nope. Been there, done that. We paid for a storage unit for almost 2 years when we moved out of our last house and aside from the stuff with sentimental value I could have thrown all of it away and bought new when I needed it for less than what I paid to store it.

Now even the stuff with sentimental value is mostly going away.

We convinced number one son to hold on to a couple of storage bins for us while we travel because there are a few things that are simply irreplaceable and at some point we will settle down and have ‘a door of our own’ again.

Imagine, though, we have a 1,680sf house plus two 40 foot Conex containers and a 12' x 40' ‘lean-to’ all loaded up with things we’ve been accumulating over our 41 years together. Heck, I have stuff from my elementary school days and that’s 50 years ago.

Now I’m trying to resolve a lifetime of memories to a pair of 27 gallon totes.

It took some time to grasp the concept that tangible reminders of places I’ve visited have very little intrinsic value and mostly just take up space. I did kind of start to get it after our trip to France in 2005 and then my trip to New Zealand/Australia shortly after. Since 2010 or so I have tried to not buy anything while traveling that wouldn’t fit in my pocket. So, fridge magnets and shot glasses were allowed but 150 page museum guidebooks were right out. Clothing was ok, of course, because that has actual utility beyond the memory of buying it.

I guess my point is this — the most important souvenir of your travels will, in the end, be the memory. Take photos you can refer back to (more photos than you’re comfortable with probably) but if it has mass and volume be extremely choosy about what you bring home with you

Your kids aren’t going to want the stuff and the stranger picking through your stuff at your final estate sale isn’t going to place the same value on it. That super cool guidebook full of beautiful photos will likely never be looked at again. You could set that $25 on fire and get the same overall benefit. The walking map of the neat village you toured will maybe be shown to one or two friends and then it will just occupy space in your life without serving any useful purpose.

Maybe you’re young enough to benefit from my thoughts; be picky about what you add to your life for purely sentimental reasons. If you’re old like me I’d be curious to hear if you have a similar mindset or experience