Our progress has been slow and steady. There has been a snag or two here and there which means that we are not as much on target as we would like to be. But we are not far off our expectations.
I began working on the Honey House on Monday…I started with the Christmas mess. To fully understand the magnitude of this small job, you have to understand that there is “our things” that we have gathered and collected over the years. And then there are “Mom’s things”—she had a large house and it was her joy to decorate it. One of the things I have not done (at least not much of) is getting rid of Mom’s excesses (Christmas trees, curtains, dishes, etc. etc…), we have stored it, pigeon holed it, etc. If we run out of space, I get rid of our things not hers. Life is not always easy for caregivers; having been friends with several people that are or have done this job these struggles are not unique to us. One reason why I ask others, who do not/have not walked in our shoes to not be so judgmental, because sometimes the facts are not always as they seem…it is better to ask questions than to think that you understand or know what is going on, because many times, what goes on in the background is a lot different than what one might suppose.
Well, now that I have that rabbit trail out of the way…then there is my mother-in-laws things. They were stored in the closet that the oldest daughter moved into three years ago and at that time I had NO time to even consider the pile and we just shoved it with the rest of the Christmas mess. Fortunately, she was not as much into Christmas so the pile was smaller; there were only two trees and a few smaller boxes…..a lot of it was flowers and odds and ends that she has saved…. And there were Christmas boxes—about 200, most of them new and in excellent condition.
For starters, I did not open up my boxes, I am a bit concerned about them because the building did get fairly damp and things smell pretty musty…and I have already lost some of our “precious” odds and ends that we have collected over the years in our travels due to water damage in Louisiana…but I know what is in my boxes and I was not going to bother with them. I shoved them tighter together and drove one. I did not open my mother’s plastic boxes; I felt it was probably all in good shape. I did however get rid of three printer paper boxes full of bows. One of these belonged to my mother-in-law the other two belonged to my mother.
The funny story on the bows is that Mom and Dad were depression era kids and they never threw anything away. (My Dad has told me stories about when he was a kid he loved beautiful wrapping paper and he would keep it to make things out of...he was one of those poor kids during that time.) If we ever know the hard times that they knew, then we might all end up being the same way in the future….Growing up we had to reuse wrapping paper, bows, etc. My parents had a few lean years when I was growing up and I appreciate that they did the best that they could and this reused paper and bows made our holidays special giving them a few extra dollars here and there to spend on gifts and food. In our excess of our generation we have often disdained this depression era collecting but not realized that it was the frugalness of our parents that gave us the good things we had as children. I mean really how many of our parents had that extra $30 a month per child for cellphones….do any of us remember how expensive it was to just call across the county line?
Well after my second rabbit trail…back to the bows. Most of these bows are all in very good condition and most have not been used (because Mom would just reuse the older ones that still looked good…) . Mom was not one to buy excessively things like packages of bows…So where did all of these bows come from….??? They belonged to my sister-in-law!!
Years ago, when my brother and his wife moved out of their house into their “new house” (which is no longer new and now belongs to another) my brother was taking a load of stuff to the dump and Mom saw all these new packages of bows and she saw no sense in throwing them out….so she brought them home with her. And for all of these years they have been part of the Christmas stuff. I am not going to send them to the dump but I have bagged them and they are going the thrift store. I think there were 8 gallon bags full and we still kept a box (although a smaller box)… that is the saga of my sister-in-law’s Christmas bows.
So between the excess boxes from one house and excess bows from the other house….I have had my fill of Christmas wrappings this week.
I took a day off from the Honey House and worked more on keeping the “mess” which that made in the garage and house under control. Then yesterday I did more cleaning and moving things around out of the Honey House. Today, I plan to take a truck load of stuff to the thrift stores and to rearrange some more things….
The long and short of this post is that the work is getting done although at the moment it looks and sometimes feels a bit like chaos. The roofing job is still in the works. That has been a bit more difficult than Hubby wanted but he thinks in the end it will have been worth it.