I Give Up On Nostalgia

When my parents moved in 2008, for the entire year before that, my mom had slowly but surely meticulously packed boxes upon boxes upon BOXES of our stuff and moved it to a storage unit near our house. She had a list with the boxes number, written on the outside, and the list told her what was in each box. When the house sold, all the sudden things were a lot less meticulous and the things that we used on a daily basis got shoved in with my old baby dolls and Lauren's old Barbies.

Lauren's old Barbies also warrant a post in and of themselves, because when we attempted to clean out the storage unit, we uncovered ELEVEN BOXES OF BARBIES. That doesn't include her Barbie house, cars, boats, etc. But I digress.

So back at Thanksgiving last year, I decided that I wanted, er, HAD TO HAVE, all my stuff out of the storage unit. I didn't trust that storage unit with all those nasty bugs, I thought someone was going to come in and steal all of my Berenstein Bears books and my report cards from Kindergarten-12th grade, and I was POSITIVE that the rest of my family just could not be responsible for my personal items that I just had to have for the rest of my life or I would die, such as my Bee, my spoon cabinets, and a mirror my best friend etched for me for my 17th birthday.

My mom & I dug through all 493 boxes and I found all the things I wanted. My spoon collection, my Berenstein Bears books, my report cards from Kindergarten-12th grade, the newspaper I was quoted in after 9/11, holiday decorations, the whole nine yards.

Well now that I've rifled through it all and gotten nostalgic and cried over pictures of my 135 lb 18 year old body, all that SHIT is sitting in my our entryway closet taking up a lot of space, and really not getting used. Now that I know it's there, I don't really want it. I'd like direct and immediate access to it, but I really don't need it to be sitting in our closet taking up copious amounts of space (and I'd imagine my roommate will be delighted with the removal of these things from our house). So tonight, I will be removing it from my immediate vicinity and putting it BACK in the storage unit, trusting that at least if it goes up in flames tomorrow, I won't be the only one missing 20 years of my life.