Basement Boxes

(Not Really Our Boxes)

I don't remember exactly what got me motivated to start going through boxes in the basement today.   I think I started off straightening some shelves, or looking for a particular photograph.   I found an old shoe-box with ten year's worth of church and family photos.  A treasure trove!  There was one there of me and Gerry that I especially love, so I brought it up and put in in a frame to enjoy.

 I was surprised to realize that I don't even know what is in all of the boxes stored downstairs. I have been slowly going through them and condensing and downsizing.  It is a process.

One cardboard box actually contained desk drawer contents--things like post-cards, labels, a white-out pen,     note pads and a whole assortment of other goodies.  I could remember the source.  When we moved out of Moravia,  and I also had to move out of the church office, and leave the desk drawer pristine.  It was too hard to sort through a bunch of tiny insignificant things, so I dumped it all in a box.  That was ten years ago!
Today I emptied that box and will put to use what is usable, and will re-cycle the box.

Yesterday, being New Year's Eve,  I put away the Christmas decorations, tree (we both moved it) and ornaments.  Today being the first day of the New Year, I continued with my organizing, throwing away, sorting, and creating order.   There is something about a new year that does that to me. I like to somehow have a clean slate.  For 2013, that was accomplished by emptying old boxes in the basement, I guess.

Someday, I'll have to figure out how to get rid of the bookcases filled with books, and the notebooks filled with sermons. Even though I have kept them, I have always always written fresh ones. I visited a retired pastor in his mid-eighties a year or so ago.  He told me he had gotten a dumpster and just thrown everything away at once.  I found that shocking, but it may be the solution eventually.

The basement is always filled with work yet to be done.   Someone will have to do it, someday.