My Gram!

The kids and I spent most of the day yesterday at my grandmother's house. We are trying to help her clear out some stuff. She is not moving, she is almost 82 and still living on her own, driving the few blocks to church or to see friends, getting out and about, enjoying life!

So the going-through-stuff had to be done. Just think of all the goods you have accumulated over the last ten or so years of marriage. It's amazing. Now imagine 62 years of stuff. It's totally crazy. So I'm having a garage sale in a few weeks and I thought, "no better time like NOW" to go through and clear out.

Now, I must tell you how much I LOVE to do this! No, I'm not kidding, I really do love it. I would love to be a professional organizer some day! ~Tidy Up with Traci!~ Doesn't that sound cute.

So, I got a few boxes and just started in. I started in the basement, in the closet under the steps. I found some cool and lot more not-so-cool stuff in that closet. Here's some of what I found: a bedside toilet, 3 pressure cookers, equipment to make juice (they always made tomato juice from the garden tomatoes), a walker, 2 baby gates(the old kind), lots of glass vases, a fondue pot, grandpa's old lunchbox and LOTS of artificial flowers - yikes! and the bugs that were living in those flowers, totally grossed me out. There was a lot more stuff and I wish I had taken a before & after picture. But it was fun and I totally caught myself saying, "I remember this....!" and "oh, do your remember when...?" It was neat! After I got the stuff out and the closet itself cleaned, swept and debugged. I put stuff back into that little closet, stuff that should go into a storage closet like that. It looks a lot better. I have a stack of stuff for the garage sale too. Maybe I can get her a little cash out of the deal!

While I was going thru stuff, I found pictures and newspaper clippings. Gram saved everything! I took her up a box of stuff to go thru and she had a blast. She loved looking back and trying to remember who was in the picture(when she remembered who it was, I had her write on the back) or why she had saved such-n-such. She even found some old handmade Mother's Day cards from her kids. Maggie and Max thought it was pretty neat to see a handmade card from their grandma. Gram loved showing my kids who the people were in the pictures and she would say, "Now this is your great-great grandmother...." It was a special moment they shared, probably more for me and Gram than for the kids, but it was fun!

I'm going to try to go over there once a week, work on it little by little, and try to really enjoy hearing the stories, seeing the pictures and spending time with my Gram!