Primo: I know you're looking
forward to cleaning out my parents' place after they die.
Me: I'm not doing that.
Primo: But what if I have to?
Aren't you going to help?
Me: Sure. I’ll tell Salvation Army
to come get everything.
Primo: But there might be stuff I
want to keep.
Me: What, like the eight-year old
Pittsburgh newspapers in the closet of the guest room?
Primo: No. But I'll have to go
through everything in case there's something I might need someday.
Me: You’re on your own on that
one, baby. I haven’t been to a wedding in a while, but I don’t think, “Help
clean out your husband’s parents’ house” is part of the vows. It’s definitely
not going to be in our vows.
Husband and I had to negotiate this one (a special conversation prompted by your blog, so you're really doing a public service here) and he agreed to help because A) some of our stuff is still in there and my father won't look for it, and B) it's a small town and my father has a huge porn collection; that's just not how I want to be remembered, even by people I'll likely never see again.
ReplyDeleteI am so glad I can help. :)
DeleteAnd yeah - people with porn? That's fine! You're grown! You can do what you want! But please designate a trusted friend to take the box in the back of your closet and burn it when you die so your kids don't have to do this. Is this really how you want to be remembered?
Ouch, this one hits close to home. My wife and daughter (primary school at the time) helped me clear out my mother's small apartment, which she moved into after she left my dad. So she picked and chose a few things from the house I grew up in, but mostly bought new furniture for her one-bedroom apartment.
ReplyDeleteMy father moved out of that house in 2006 to sell it as part of the divorce proceedings, and apparently he took boxes of utility bills with him, because when I had to clean out his apartment and its borderline hoarder-level contents, I found them, neatly rubber banded by year, and alphabetized by utility name.
This is why I sifted through for some important papers, and had the rest hauled off to the dump, some of it unopened. I really didn't have the mental or emotional reserves to sift through everything. And my wife and daughter stayed home for this one, because it was a long-distance trip, we couldn't just go work on it for a day or even a weekend.