This past week I made another couple trips back to D1. We now have about three weeks to get the rest of Grandma’s “stuff” out and the apartment cleaned. I know I’ve procrastinated in the effort, but it’s what I do.
I can spend as much time making a plan, as I can executing it. In this case, I planned to empty the contents of all the kitchen cupboards and drawers, storage and front closets into the now empty living room. I came bearing garbage bags. In the interest of time, I’ll merely note the highlights in this episode.
The first cupboard I opened revealed several plates, vases and five ceramic shrimp boats. What is a shrimp boat you ask? Well, it looks like a boat, says “SHRIMP” on the side and has a little separator inside so you can place shrimp cocktail in one portion and the sauce to dip it in, in the other. I recall these being stored in the living room cupboard in the house I grew up in. I do not recall them ever being used. How they survived three moves, I’ll never know.
One garbage bag was reserved for plastic recyclables. Grandma likes cottage cheese and fruit. Every week the past two years, when we would buy her groceries, we would get a couple 4-packs of various kinds of little fruit cups and a large container of cottage cheese. This was a staple in her diet, along with pot pies and frozen dinners. I opened one cupboard to find it filled to overflowing with all the empty containers… washed, nested and bagged. Dozens of black plastic microwaveable dishes… hundreds of fruit cups… not to mention the many containers (with corresponding lids in another bag). With a stockpile like this, you’d wonder why there’d be a need for Tupperware. Except….
Grandma used to sell Tupperware. Anyone who has ever been to a Tupperware party knows the multitude of specialty products they offer. Grandma had them all. I know she has purged some over the years (probably gave them to me) but the volume of burpable plastic was still huge. The best find of the day was tucked back behind some of those plastic containers when I ran across some large pastel tumblers – likely not the ones I grew up with, but identical. They put a smile on my face. I put them in the pile to take home.
And then there were her “good dishes”. I remember my Mom admiring a particular pattern of Franciscan dinnerware, simply named, “Apple”. Her best friend had the “Desert Rose” pattern and encouraged Mom to start her set. She would buy one place setting at a time and would ask for additional pieces at holiday or other gift-giving time. She amassed enough to amply serve our small family for special occasions. She would frequently comment about how much she loved those dishes (and matching glassware). One day her friend said, “If you like them so much, why do you only use them for special occasions? Use them every day.”
Mother was aghast, “Every day? My ‘good’ dishes?”
And so it was, that for the last three dozen years, Grandma enjoyed her good dishes, most of which survived their everyday duty. I again smile as I place them in the living room along with the other significant and not so significant items.
More cupboards, more “stuff”. The plastic bags her newspapers came wrapped in… neatly folded and clothes pinned in tidy groups…. an assortment of coffee mugs… cookware… more Tupperware. And then the food.
Two years ago, we took ‘stove cooking privileges’ away from Grandma. She only used her microwave. I should have gone through her cupboards then, but I didn’t. Now – I find boxes and packets of every kind of food item known to inhabit a kitchen. The cake mix closest to the front of the cupboard shows an expiration date of 2007. A fresh garbage bag becomes the receptacle for every item in the grocery cabinets except for a box of four small bottles of food coloring. I put them with the Tupperware tumblers.
DH and I returned a couple days later to box and bag up enough Goodwill donations to fill the backseat of the car. I vacillate between wanting to keep as many of her things as possible, to wanting to pitch it all (and then going home to pitch my ‘stuff’ as well.) I continue to remind myself that this process is part of life. We all collect… keep… sometime horde – so that someday, someone else has to sift through what we thought was so important and couldn’t throw out. I’m as guilty as her.
As we go to the car, I take stock of the full backseat and rejoice knowing the trunk (which contains what we’re taking into our house) has only a fraction of that amount. Of course, we’re far from done. There will be more trips to D1… more trips to Goodwill… more trash and more treasures… and hopefully more thought on my part the next time I have to choose to dispose of or keep something of my own!
So ends Episode 9
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