The Purge...aka the Shit Shift

My mom has recently been subjected (by my step-dad) to a home remodel that she wasn't all that interested in. Now, in my step-dad's defense, the house needed a pick-me-up. And my mom needed to purge. But she's overwhelmed by the process and the large amount of crap in her garage. So, yesterday, I hired my sweet cousin, Caroline, to babysit the kids and went to Mom's house to help her sort and purge.

The house looks really nice. Mom and Bob knocked out a wall separating two bedrooms and make a large master bedroom instead. The entire house has been painted, the driveway has been resurfaced, and the landscaping has been touched up. When I arrived yesterday, there were dishes and various and sundry knick-knacks littering the kitchen table and the sunroom table, but overall, the house looked bright, clean, and fairly well organized. The new bedroom is beautiful, and the closets were full of nicely organized clothes.

Then I saw the garage.

The two-car garage is filled to nearly overflowing with boxes, boxes, and more boxes. Apparently, when the remodel began, Mom just boxed everything up, took it outside, and decided she'd go through it when she unpacked. I, being a organizational junkie, agreed to help her sort through what was left. The first problem I noticed, though, was that the house already seemed reasonably full. There was no room for anything in the garage to come back in.

My niece, Amber, and I decided that the best approach would be to start in the kitchen and help Mom sort through her overstuffed cabinets and hutches to make room for the things in the garage that she wanted to keep. Mom was not thrilled with this approach. "That was not on my to-do list," she argued. We had to strong arm her a bit to convince her that nothing else could come in from the garage until there was more room in the house.

As Amber and I began the cleaning out process, we quickly realized we were in over our heads. We had Mom sit in a chair. She had three choices for every item we presented to her: keep, give away, or put in the "maybe" pile. After about ten minutes, we had moved everything from the cabinets into the "maybe" pile. It was not a purge; it was simply a shift.

Mom's response to everything we held up to her was, "...but don't you think that's pretty? That was given to me by (fill in the name of the friend, relative, co-worker of your choice). I got it for my (fill in the appropriate holiday, birthday, etc.)." We finally had to remind her that we weren't making judgment calls; we simply needed one of the three given responses. Inevitably, she'd look nervous and say, "maybe."

Here are a few of the more enjoyable finds of the day...

1. An unopened, unused food chopper. It had to have been in her cupboard for at least ten years; it was all the way in the dusty back corner under some cobwebs. She reasoned, however, that because it was brand new (10 years ago), she couldn't possibly give it away.

2. Five calculators. They all worked. We told her to pick one. She couldn't understand why she shouldn't keep all five if they were in good working order. I pointed out that one of them went through college with me. She argued that it had to be a fine calculator if it was still working.

3. Fourteen decks of cards; eight complete sets. We let her keep all the sets of 52. It wasn't worth the fight.

4. An unused basket with a microwaveable pouch to keep rolls warm. Again, she argued that she needed it because it was brand new. I argued that she didn't need it because she doesn't even know how to work the microwave.

For two hours, it went on and on and on. Finally, she broke for a cigarette, and we never resumed the battle. I threw as many things into the "give away" pile as I could while she wasn't looking. She promptly took 3/4 of it back out.

God love her.