A Bittersweet Summer Project

The first week that school was out, my sister (known here as Aunt) and I came together to clean out Dad’s house. We worked all day on Monday and the dumpster came on Tuesday. Wed. Hubby came and took apart the sheds and barn and helped us tremendously.


Aunt was the official photographer – it was our solution to not hanging on to everything. Looking back at the pictures I realized how terribly dirty everything was and I wish we had done it sooner. However, at the time keeping up with Dad was all we could manage. I’m very grateful to have the pictures. Really, what does one do with the Christmas tree they made over 25 years ago?

The temperature was already in the 90s for this project and we did it without air conditioning so beware, some of these pictures of us are just awful! Some highlights were finding my Bible from 1981, trying on Mom’s clothes from the 60s and 70s, having family stop by and hang out, looking at pictures and greeting cards together, finding family history, seeing all the evidences of a proud Grandpa, going to lunch in town with Hubby and Aunt and then another day with Aunt, and seeing things from childhood.

This is "awful" - putting on a long sleeve dress in a house that's over 90 degrees. Did save the dress though. I have a few outfits for a vintage party.

While these cards were mine, we also took pictures of cards that belonged to Mom and Dad. We found cards in every room of the house (except the bathroom!).
There was not a shortage of pictures of M & L in the house!

These curlers belonged to Aunt and the books were mine.

I thought that I’d write a really great blog post on doing this, but honestly after going back and looking at the pictures, it’s still kind of emotional and I’m not quite there. When everything was in the dumpster it was all still our stuff (most things weren’t in any kind of condition to keep). It was on Friday when I got to Dad’s house that was hard – the dumpster was gone. I am very happy to have this done though. There are some odds n ends left in the house, but it’s mainly cleaned out (but not clean!).