Revising My Life
Today I spent the day sorting through all my personal effects here in Ithaca. I want to get this all done in two days so that I can avoid inflicting my triage activities on my daughter and granddaughters. I want them to throughly enjoy their last stay at this house and not be burdened by having to be constantly reminded that we are moving on. Nothing disturbs our dog Betty more than packing up before a move. It screams change and for the uninitiated, change is troubling. So I want to get all the boxes more or less out of the way and packed by tomorrow evening. Triaging clothes doesn’t involve too much tripping through memory lane. Maybe some people connect clothing to life events, but to me, clothes are just an issue of fit. While there is some history to my sizing, I have more or less worn the same size for the last fifteen years and the direction of my sizing has only become less over that timeframe. When I was younger, I was far more likely to be confronted with clothing that didn’t fit because it was too small, but now its just a matter of whether the item looks worn or a tad too big…or perhaps a little bit of style drift.
In shirts, I have button-down tailored shirts that are almost all custom-made and T-shirts, which are either topical to things I still care about or not. It’s even simpler with pants, they are either jeans or khakis. I hardly ever wear sweaters anymore in California, so they are likely out no matter what. In other words, I cut through clothing very quickly and anything that is specific to business attire (like wing-collar shirts or dress slacks) go into the out category. The rest of the triage goes quickly. I dealt with the wardrobe and the closet, start to finish. The toss clothes all went into large plastic bags and the keeps went into boxes. I took four bags of clothes to the ReUse Center this morning and have so far filled up about five boxes. Upon reflection and with some urging from Kim, I think I have to triage the five boxes one more time and narrow my filter to drop two of the boxes and get those over to the ReUse Center. I suspect I have made some heavyweight needy clients of the ReUse Center very happy today and they will get happier tomorrow.
I spent a few minutes going through the Study where the small desk and the bookshelves needed review and cleansing. The desk took up a quarter of a box at most and there were fewer books worth saving than I thought. There were lots of old business school and economics texts that I have no use for and even more alternative investment books that hold even less interest to me. The memorabilia on the shelves was actually more worthy of keeping, but even that left me wanting to leave most of it for my kids to sort through. I did find some books from my mother that I want to give to my sisters, but I have very little room for more books, so I only took a few, figuring the rest can go to some used book store if the kids don’t want them.
As I have drifted around the house on this mission, I have also noted the things that I think my kids need to consider more closely. I have called them all on several pieces and talked them into letting me put their name next to the inventory items in question. I want as much of this as possible to go to the kids or my cousin. In days gone by, there would have been a meaningful need for things like good furniture, but not so much thee days. My daughter has little room for anything. My youngest son will move apartments later this year, but he has minimal things he needs. My oldest son has a new house as of this week and is clearly the biggest target for offloading. His list is already the longest, but I called his wife and talked her into even more.
I then shifted my attention to my big challenge, the carriage house. Downstairs I have an entire memorabilia wall done in the manner of an Applebee’s restaurant. I will take that down tomorrow and probably save most of that material, which won’t amount to more than a few inches of paper and photos. Upstairs on either side of the desk I have two full L-shaped credenzas that wee chock-a-block with memorabilia of all sorts. There are pictures, statues, books, magazines, articles, papers and various odds and ends including lots and lots of photos. All of it takes time to review and all of it has been kept for some specific reason since I have triaged all of this at least once before when I tossed out tons of business-related chotchkas. In the investment banking field, the most popular memorabilia comes in the form of deal monuments, which are most often made of lucite with some relevant item imbedded in the piece. I have ones with hunks of coal, metal airplanes, miniature buildings and God-knows what else. Those I have now sorted down to just a handful that signify big shifts in my career, usually accompanied by big paydays. I no longer need to remind myself that I did a lot of deals and ran a lot of businesses, but when I get into the articles and press information, there are still things that seem important enough to me to save. They are a large part of who I am and that’s worth a little inconvenience of figuring out where to put it all when it gets back to my hillside.
The hard part of the process is not just the triage, but the fact that this is perhaps the first time I have bothered to traipse down memory lane and any way you slice it, it take s time to think through a whole career worth of stuff. But as I look at the piles to be tossed and the boxes of what is to be saved and sent home, I am relatively pleased that I have been only modestly sentimental. I would say that 2/3 of the keeper stuff is family-oriented with only a third related to my career. I suspect that is a common distinction that most everyone makes. Priorities have a way of universally establishing themselves for us all and family almost always wins.
All that is left at this point is to take the boxes of clothes and some of the boxes of other stuff to the UPS store to mail home. I considered using a Pod moving system, but when I priced it out, it was far too expensive for the amount I have to send. We do have the room to take back the heaviest stuff in the back of our SUV and that is the plan, but I will err on the side of sending more rather than less to be sure we do not overload the car and that we leave a little room for the last minute thoughts of things to take.
There is value is routinely revising your life. What good is a life without memories and what good are memories if you don’t take the time to think them through. I ran across a lot of things (pictures, articles and the like) that I didn’t recall having. I have a lot of pictures sent to me by my mother in her final years. Some of those I will share with my sisters when I get home. I’ve already shown Kim some pictures, so I’m happy to report that I am now officially ready to welcome my family tomorrow for a peaceful visit with only memory making on the agenda and not the revising of my life that should only be done in private.