A Stroll Down Memory Lane

I spent this past weekend cleaning out my office and, more specifically, the closet in my office to prepare for our upcoming garage sale. The room I use for the office is the third bedroom in my house. Like the other bedrooms, it has a walk-in closet which is great for storage. Unlike the other bedrooms, it has a tile floor which makes it great to double as Maverick’s room. Because of the function of the room, it has ended up being more of a junk room than anything else. If I needed to move something or get something out of the way but I really didn’t have anywhere else to put it, it went in the office. When I had important papers that needed to be filed but I didn’t have time to deal with them, they went into the office. You get the picture...the room was where my pack rat side resided.

After cleaning out the guest room so it could be redecorated and repurposed into Kiddo’s room, the cleaning bug struck. It was time for me to tackle the office. I had told The Sheriff at the beginning of the summer that I wanted to get the house and garage into better shape while we didn’t have Kiddo around. I figured it would be easier because we wouldn’t have to be monitoring him all time so we could focus on our tasks. Well, this summer has been pretty non-stop with the wedding in Tennessee and my reunion in Alabama so we have had very little down time. Kiddo will be home in 2 weeks so crunch time is now.

What I knew about the closet in the guest room was that I had stored a lot of my serving pieces and such that I didn’t use regularly in there. It also contained boxes of scrapbooking supplies and other trinkets I had packed when I moved to Austin from Killeen. During the 6 month stay in my apartment, there were so many boxes with so little space that only the absolute necessities got unpacked. What I had forgotten was what some of those boxes contained. I found cards from the ex and his family. I found mementos from trips and events. I even found a wedding planning guide from my first wedding that I had pulled out to help my brother and his wife when they planned their wedding. Basically what I found was proof of the life I once led. A life that seems so far away now. I wasn’t sad but I did have to question how I got to where I am now. It was all a bit of a shock to the system, mostly because I thought I had gotten rid of that stuff but I remembered running out of time before the move and not being able to get to that stuff before it was pack. Since the move, the boxes just haven’t been accessible. I filled several trash bags full of those memories that are no longer mine and said good riddance to that life.