A Shelf Fell Down

One of my only complaints about this house is that the shelving in closets are weak.  Each of the them have fallen now.  This last one was in Monica's Closet.  I ignored it for a few weeks because I knew it would be a much bigger job than I wanted to undertake. The shelf conveniently rested on stacks of totes so there was no emergency.

We had our annual birthday gathering for Kevin and the littles this past weekend so I knew I had to work on it, want to or not.  I had sorted and stacked what was on the actual shelf and left it outside the closet door, which the OCD hated but I told it to pipe down.  It did make me give a bunch of stuff to the eldest Niece, who was THRILLED to have it.  Some of it is still in the back of the 4Runner, waiting to go to Goodwill. 

The closet is the one space that I allow to be a bit messy yet it is quite organized. (my definition of messy, Kevin says) On the left are four totes of Christmas decorations and two faux Christmas trees.  Half of these are the in-laws so put down your plans for an intervention.

The center stack is stuff I use intermittently like a tote of gift bags and ribbons, a tall tote of wrapping paper, a tote of picture frames and pictures, and the bedding for the racecar trailer. This stack often gets random stuff piled on top of it; ignored filing, empty boxes, toys for the kids, etc.

Next row is decorations left over from when I worked at the school.  I used to decorate the office (and my house, actually) for each holiday.  I've pared this down quite a bit but it still exists.
This leaves the final row.  This row of totes are keepsakes.  Books, toys, and stuffies from my childhood, stuff from Kevin's childhood, and just random and I mean RANDOM keepsakes. Greeting cards, stickers, funny cartoons, correspondence, stuff you would probably find in any high school locker.

My intention is to someday put these items into scrapbook albums.  But someday keeps getting further away.  Some of it has lost it's meaning so I'm all "Why did I keep this" and some of it is stuff I can look up on the interwebs or scan into the laptop and be done with it.  I like how some "problems" are solved just by the passage of time.

The biggest challenge is greeting cards. If I could figure out how to remove signatures from greeting cards, I would have an entire Hallmark store inventory.  I just feel badly about tossing them into the trash.  I've kept a small collection of milestones but over time, all of the cards from all of the things have been thrown together.

Maybe I'm over-thinking this (don't say Hoarder) but I have difficulty choosing which cards to keep because people die and then seeing that signature is comforting.  But that doesn't mean keep them forever because people might die.  So, we're back to the milestones only.

Kevin thinks keeping our childhood stuff is a little silly at this point because we don't have kids.  We have grand nephews and nieces but I think they have very little interest in old stuffies and Hot Wheels. Some of the toys have value on the ebay but who wants to deal with that? Clearly not me.

So, in three totes in a far corner of a closet, sit memories of our existence.  Kevin said "Or you can leave them and the Nephew and Niece will have to deal with them." Nice, Kevin, you and your black heart.

For now, it's all reassembled and a little less crowded.  Some day I'll decide about those greeting cards and buy scrapbooks.  Someday.  But we all know that when I buy those scrapbooks, they're just going to sit in Monica's closet until the shelf falls down again.