Things I Have Learned While Cleaning Out Mom’s House

Nadine and Kerry

Editor’s note: This was originally a Facebook post by my friend, Lisa Williamson Long. Her mother recently passed away and as usually happens after the loss of a loved one, she has been going through belongings.  Lisa’s sister, Kerry, was my best friend from 4th grade to the beginning of high school, so I knew their mom from hanging around their house a lot. She taught high school level home economics and I always thought she was one of the most sophisticated and pretty women I knew.

Here’s Lisa’s post:

Things I have learned while cleaning out mom’s house:

1. Any boxed paperwork you put in your rafters is boxed paperwork you don’t need to keep.

2. Move everything in the family room a foot to the right and it will look like a different room.  

3. One day that stupid ceramic Christmas pixie that always went on the mantle, the one that broke into 6 or 8 pieces and was glued back together, the one you got at the dime store and says “Made in Japan” on the bottom, yes that one – one day it will mean more to one of your kids than the leaded crystal, fine china or sterling silver.

4. Even though you can often safely eat food with an expired “best by” date on it, there is a valid argument to be made for discarding it when that date is more than five years past.

5. Photos worth keeping are photos worth labeling.

6. A woman needs over 30 sharp knives in her kitchen.

7. We should put notes to our kids in the boxes of our stuff they will have to go through one day, telling them we love them, and that we have full confidence that whatever they decide to do with our stuff will be the right thing to do, and reminding them of happy memories they might have forgotten.

8. Parents had a life before their kids were born that their kids might not know anything about.

9. Use the antique embroidered pillowcases now.