Reveries

 As I may have mentioned more than once, I have too much stuff.  I have a basement full of stuff.  A good bit of it is stuff from my mom.  The old pictures I want to keep.  The multiple boxes of Christmas stuff, I don't.  But there are books, old files, old dishes, old toys, old this, old that.  And some of that stuff is mine.  Like a lot of teachers I hang onto and collected things to teach with and now I should cull it.  In truth, I should ditch it.

My difficulty comes when I go down to start to clean it out. I usually take a box to fill with stuff to donate and a bag for garbage.  I get through looking at 3 or 4 items and then I run across something that takes me someplace else.  Yesterday I came across a little German picture book that I bought in a department store in Geneva, Switzerland.  It has no value.  I don't speak German.  My son wouldn't want it.  Why keep it?  Because seeing it takes me back to 1973 when as an exchange student to Brighton College of Education and traveled on the continent in April.  My friend and I went into a very expensive department store.  We looked around and I found that little book that I could afford.  I have a lot of books like that.

So, I didn't get much done in the cleaning out.  I concluded that I need to get rid of numerous books like that little German book or maybe it is Swiss?  Anyway, I don't need it.  I am not planning to take it to heaven with me.  Every time I go to the basement, I end up lost in a reverie.  I guess there are worse places to be.