books, boxes and booze

I've been packing up my mom's house all week and its a lot of work.  I find myself throwing out at least one contractor garbage bag full of trash every day.  There are about 30 boxes full of stuff that I still have to go through with my brother, which I put in the basement.  Then there are the 30 donate/sell boxes, things that are not trash but that my mom doesn't want to move or my brother and I don't want to keep. Of course my mom has about 20 boxes so far of things she is moving to her new apartment. Its a lot of boxes.

There are a lot of books.  Books are really heavy.  I would love to donate them to a charity book fair, but they don't provide a pick up service and I am not lugging 8 boxes of books in and out of my car.

I've found a lot of cool things in mom's house.  First of all my dad kept a lot of records.  I now know exactly what the household expenses were in 1979, 1980. 1981.... you get the picture.  And this was all before computers.  I also have every card and letter I ever wrote to my parents as well as all the report cards. I think these things are only cool to me and my brother, but we should have a good laugh this summer when we go through them.

And then there are the bottles.  My parent's liquor cabinet contained all sorts of strange libations which were so old that that bottles where still sealed with those tax stamps they used to use in Missouri.  Mom still had three unopened bottles of scotch and whiskey which we gave away.  The rest of the booze was undrinkable.

Well, I'm off to Council Shop to drop off eight bags of clothes for donation.  Then to the dry cleaner to give them two shopping bags full of wire hangers. Finally to the grocery store's change machine to convert my mom's giant bag of change into paper money. I'm thinking its about $200 worth and she will be donating it to charity!