This past weekend, CobraMrsFit and I began the long, agonizing journey of cleaning the basement at my folks place. This was due in part to needing a place to put the lumber that’s going to become hardwood floors, but it was also because I’ve been an adult longer than I was ever a kid and yet I still have crap in my parent’s basement.*
And crap is the only word that can describe it.
I’ll spare you the gory details, but there were a few notable items among the mounds and mounds of garbage.
1) Folders from Freshman year of college, complete with notes. You can even see where I dozed off. “Let’s see, if two trains left at…zzzzzzz…..”
2) A cassette player still in its packaging. That’ll come in real handy when I make a mix tape for CobraMrsFit.
3) A box of my favorite books I thought long-gone.
4) A box with all my cookbooks, also thought lost to the ravages of time/moving a lot in the previous career.
5) Approximately 47 old movie ticket stubs.
6) A set of golf clubs my grandfather gave me when I was 8. Steel shafts and wooden heads.
7) 5 rocks (for the geologists in the crowd: 3 granite, one marble, and one purple geode).
8) An old journal with only one entry which begins, “I have decided that I will actually keep up with a journal this time.”
9) My very first attempt at writing a novel. It is, in a word, atrocious. However, it’s now in a folder with the other WIPs to remind me of where I started and that with enough effort, there are places I can go.
10) My all-time favorite: A love letter to CobraMrsFit that I never sent because 13-years-ago me completely chickened out. And yes, I finally gave it to her.
The list goes on an on. Suffice to say, I plan to clean more than once a decade from now on, but it was a wonderful (if not disgustingly dirty) trip down memory lane.
How about you all? Any tales of Stuff You Found?
*okay, quick note about this so you all don’t think me a complete slacker: I moved back to the DC area exactly 7 minutes after the housing bubble collapsed and wound up at the folks place for a while because 1) every place I tried to buy got snatched up by investors with cash and B) the banks weren’t lending money. Because of the time-lapse, all three bedrooms of my old house showed up before I could find a place. The boxes went into the basement and have been there ever since. The moral of the story: gut your place before you move!