I made myself a treat. My husband had to meet with clients over the weekend, so while he was busy, I bought two pounds of little neck clams and made myself a feast. I had clams while I was visiting Seattle, of course, but I can never get too many!

I’m finally attacking some chores that I’ve tried to avoid. When I say avoid, I mean I’ve successfully put them off for years!

First there was a huge box that my brother mailed to me in 2015. I know the date because its stamped across the two-foot by three-foot-long box on the UPS label. It was a box from Mom. I hadn’t looked at it until after she died. When I was getting ready for my trip to spread her ashes on on our riverfront property, I thought perhaps I’d take a peek inside the box. I found several photos to share with family and promised myself I’d get into the box when I returned.

The box had lived in our hallway closet in Palm Springs until we moved. Then it found a home in a hallway closet in Arizona.

I ordered a couple photo storage boxes and decided I needed to sort through the photos from mom’s childhood through my adulthood. The keepers are now in a 11.25″ X 7.75″ box.

I discovered tiny little photos from my mom’s childhood of relatives I’ve never met. I think Mom said she had a Brownie camera. I wonder if that’s what made the teeny tiny photos?

I found color polaroids from my childhood. Photos from our trip to Hawaii when I was in second grade. Vacation days in Victoria BC where my brother and I were dressed up like we were going to church. Several years of birthday parties with neighborhood and school friends.

Mom also had tons of photos of my children, from when they were babies to beginning grade school. I did more throwing out than saving and felt somewhat satisfied to toss the huge cardboard box in recycling.

Now I have four boxes out from the same hallway closet to conquer. I’m on a roll and don’t want to stop now. These boxes are full of framed photos. I think I’m going to take the photos out and if I want to keep them, store them in a photo box. The frames I’ll take to the Kiwanis Thrift Shop. It will feel good to get rid of all this stuff that’s sitting in boxes for years. These are boxes that were stored for years in Palm Springs and rather than making decisions about them before we moved, I moved the boxes with me.

Here’s a photo my mom took of my husband and me when we first got together. My husband was my son’s age!