Surprises in the Garage

For the past two days I've been over at my Mom's trying to help her sort thru the mess that is her garage. As the weather continues to warm up, she is getting more and more motivated to clean things out so she can get her car in before the heat really hits. Last week she got a postcard in the mail saying Big Brother/Sisters would be thru the neighborhood for donation pick up, so we figured we could have a big pile for them.

Well, that didn't really happen. She is just having the worst time parting with her stuff. Lots of tears and her constantly telling me that I don't understand and that I am trying to throw her life away. You can imagine how great that made me feel! We only ended up with about 2 boxes for donation the first day but Brenna and I did haul all of the extra furniture over to the consignment shop, so that cleaned out a bunch at least. I mostly spent Monday getting out all the boxes, going thru them and then moving them to the other side of the garage. I kept trying to keep my Mom on task but the least little thing would distract her. Brenna and I had a running joke every time that would happen. One of us would say, "Sparkles!" and we'd know she got distracted again. Mom would also do a lot of moving one pile of junk to another pile without really doing anything with it. That drove me crazy.

I went back over there on Tuesday and we did make more progress. The donation pile actually had about 5 boxes of stuff and I took 3 more boxes over to the consignment store, mostly of crystal she no longer wanted. I hate to call my mom a hoarder, but she is kind of boarderline, in my opinion. Not bad like the TV show, but still. When you find at least 40 pairs of nylons that have never been opened or worn, you kind of have to wonder.

I did find one thing that was pretty interesting to me. I found my Grandma's wedding dress from 1941. It is still in perfect condition, just needs to be ironed. I'm not sure what I am going to do with it yet, but I did take it home. My Mom has horrible memories of her mother as there was a lot of mental and verbal abuse and she didn't want it. Actually, I'm kind of surprised she even had it. My grandparents did not have a happy marriage and we will never understand why my Grandpa didn't divorce the old biddy.




Closer look at the front of the dress and it's detail. Very simple but pretty



This is the back of the dress. It's pretty simple but has about 50 tiny little buttons down the back.


I also found a picture of my Grandma in her wedding dress. She was always such an unhappy person but to see her not even smiling in her wedding photo just confirms that more in my mind. It's too bad the picture doesn't do the dress justice.



We still can't get the car into the garage, but we are getting closer. She now has about 6 or 7 boxes she needs to do something with and that would allow her to get the car in. Once that happens, I don't think she will be able to part with anything else that is in the garage, but there you go.