Where to Start... Oh, Where to Start

It is now 8 1/2 months since we moved. We did a considerable amount of downsizing (throwing and giving away) at the time. It was painful and grief inducing but we were moving from a house into an apartment. We knew we wanted to do this since we have been through cleaning out homes in the past when an aging parent died. So we really do want to make life easier on ourselves as well.

That, as it turns out was the easy part.

There are still wall-hangings sitting on the floor. There are still boxes and boxes in my computer room. At a quick count there are probably 30 of various sizes sitting around the edge of the room and in the closet. They fill the closet.

What is in them? Well many contain pictures. And more pictures. Thousands of pictures.

Others contain slides. Thousands and thousands of slides.

Then there are still boxes of books that we didn't get rid of and don't have shelf room for.

And we can't forget boxes and boxes of cassette tapes. Yes, cassette tapes. That have not been listened to since at least Bill Clinton's presidency since we don't have a car with a cassette player or one in the house that we ever use.

CDs? Of course. The empty boxes from the ones that are in the travel cases. And the full ones that don't fit on the shelves. Which I never listen to since many of my CDs have been put on iTunes/iPod- but the CDs are still there. Of course.

I go on and on. I sit in the room and stare at the computer screen so I don't have to turn around and look at the boxes.

Or the papers and files.

I turn around, feel overwhelmed and head to the coffee shop.

We got into a discussion about it just yesterday. Mostly about my room but also about some of the other "treasures" that we just were not able to get rid of, including books and CDs that are on the shelves. Our daughter says she is ruthless about keeping things. But she has always lived in an apartment. By the time we were her age we had begun accumulating in our first parsonage. A big old farm house.

Well, over the next couple months we have to do something. I don't have enough time left in my lifetime to scan all the pictures that I might want to keep. And the slides... Israel, nature, Austria and Germany (in 1970!) They are almost 40 years of life.

I saw an article in the paper about a service that will scan pictures, a thousand of them, for a reasonable rate. But I still have to go through and pick out which thousand I want. But at least I am thinking about it.

Downsizing is harder than it looks. Any ideas? Let me know.