Letters from My Younger Self Update for Tackle it Tuesday

Several weeks ago I posted about the huge pile of letters that I “inherited” when my mother died. She had saved every letter, birthday card., postcard, and message that my brothers and I had ever sent her. When we cleaned out her house, my brothers and I each saved the letters that we had written her. The letters have sat untouched in my back bedroom for three years. I posted that I was going to start going through them and figure out what to do with them. It didn’t seem appropriate to throw them away without looking at them, but there’s such a huge pile that it is overwhelming. I committed to spending at least an hour a week sorting the letters.


I have now spent several hours sorting the letters into groups by year. The photo above shows the letters from 1968, the first year that there is a collection of my letters. There are 21 letters, 4 postcards, and two copies of my college newspaper written between September, 1968 and December, 1968. This is the year that I graduated from high school and left California for college in Oregon.

There are letters for every year up to 1990. I have read only a few of the letters. Some of them didn’t have clear postmarks so to determine the year I had to open them to find the date…and several times I couldn’t resist reading. I think it must be a little like reading a diary years after writing it. I revisited long forgotten people and events.

There are many letters from 1976-78, the years my husband and I served in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua. I read several letters from 1980-82. These years my children were the same ages as my grandchildren are now. I was never very good about writing down in their baby books all those cute things my kids said and did. In the few letters that I took time to read, there are anecdotes of their development. I had forgotten completely that my son’s first sentence was “Drink beer?”

I guess it was a good thing that I didn’t throw them away. But I’m still not sure how to proceed. I do want to recover the stories of my children’s childhood. Now that they are organized by year, I will start reading through them. I’m thinking about writing a timeline of what was going on in the world each year and what our family was doing.

There aren’t any long lost secrets buried in my letters, but I am enjoying revisiting my youthful self. …and then I’ll get the courage to throw them away!

Messages From Myself at a Younger Age

My mother kept every letter, card, and message that I ever sent her. When she died my brothers and I cleaned out her house and claimed our childhood relics. For three years my cards and letters sat in boxes in my back bedroom. It doesn’t seem right to throw them away, but what am I supposed to do with them? I’ve decided to set aside an hour a week to start to organize and read through them. If they are as uninteresting as I think they are, I can throw them away with a clean conscience. Once a week I will post on my progress.

Maybe I’ll throw them away. Maybe I’ll find insight. Maybe I’ll find inspiration. Maybe I’ll just organize this one small part of my inheritance from my mother. It’s a journey I need to take, if only to spare my children the burden when they inherit the leftovers of my life.

Tackle it Tuesday Success Story

If I hadn't posted pictures of my clutter I probably would not have gotten anything done.  Although it took me several weeks, I finally made the effort to get some progress pictures taken and posted.  I didn't think that the Internet police would be busting in my doors to cite me for excessive cluttering, but I also didn't like that I had unfinished business hanging out in the public domain. 
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        Before                                  After

Okay, I'm not ready for House Beautiful yet, but I cleaned out a lot of clutter and got the paintings hung.

I'm starting in on the kitchen next.  It is time for a kitchen make-over.  I'd like to have fancy countertops, but in this economy I really can't justify the cost.   In the next month I'm going to replace the out-dated tile backsplash, paint the walls, and call in the cabinet guy adjust the cabinet configeration so I can install a new stainless microwave/range hood over the range.

Thanks for the encouragement and for keeping me accountable for getting something done. 

Clutter Busting for Tackle It Tuesday

I'm not sure that I should be posting under this Tackle It Tuesday meme. I think I'm supposed to actually accomplish something before I post. All that I have accomplished is identifying the targets...and taking the before pictures. I figured if I made this public declaration of my intention, maybe I'd actually follow through and get at least one of these messes cleaned up.

As you enter my front door the picture below is what you see.  What a lovely greeting!  Every cubby is filled with clutter.

The counters in my kitchen are full...because there's no room in the cupboards for the overflow!

The counters in the laundry room aren't any better than the kitchen.

When my mother died, I inherited all her jewlery.  There are pieces that I remember her wearing and pieces that we bought when we shopped together.  There are also pieces that hold no meaning for me or have no value or are broken.  There are single earrings and rings missing stones.  When I brought the jewlery home after cleaning out her house, I piled it in the back bedroom.  I haven't sorted through it because making decisions about what to keep and how to dispose of the unwanted items seems to be too big a task.  Several times I started sorting and then gave up.  It has been two years since she died, and it's time to get this taken care of.  The pictures below don't really show the scope of the task!

Now that I have thrown open the curtains to expose the clutter that is my home, I'm making a commitment to start organizing.  I know I will never be Martha Stewart, but I do believe that one cannot have tranquility in life when living in chaos.  I'm choosing to shoot for tranquility.