Hardest Thing about moving in with your spouse was...

God Bless Gertrude, I'll bet she has a heck of a time cleaning dirty dishes!

I don't know where I got such nerve but because he wanted me to be with him everyday and I just couldn't stand the 'bachelor pad' scene any longer, I cleaned up my boyriend's (now husband"s) place, from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen, and actually tossed out an old tattered and torn piece of a sectional he was using for a chair. He came home from work that evening and saw it sitting by the garbage bin.
Thank goodness his love was such that he found it amusing. He still teases me about it ten years later.

But wait. I threw out my OWN Sports Illustrated, all the beginning issues, for four or five years. Clang to the head, another bullet to the body. Things accrue in value, whether sentimental or real. And they also become more and more trashy. Still... I threw lots of valuable stuff out in my life. For example, I played with a Hopalong Cassidy kiddie gun belt... about the same time the show was on tv.

oh, I don't mean to get you paranoid, but consider not just tossing collectible stuff. Or tossing it in some kind of storage place.

Yeah, I know, it is good to be free of earthly goods, including early issues of sports illustrated, and the detritus of accumulation wears you down. Tis a judgement call - just understand when you are deciding.

I try and clear out magazines and saved newspapers every two years but some things are kept for reference like the Vogue September issues. I kept every Newsweek while the Bill Clinton/Monica thing was going on. And major events like the Olympics, tributes to Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, Sammy Davis Jr., that sort of thing. Some things you just can't throw out.
I may have tossed out my old man's raggedy furniture but his albums and books? Wouldn't dream of laying anything less than a loving hand on them.

Eoe, that looked like I answered you, but I was answering myself at the time...

understand..

No harm done. We're talking about the same thing.

Yes, and as long as you are saving, save astutely, and don't just hoard.

Too bad I didn't listen to myself. Well, other things take precedence. But given how the economy frolics, it is useful not to just toss everything.

Worse, of course, to become an insane hoarder.

I like to mix the two... I have some italian fashion magazines from when I first went berserko about italy, back in the late eighties... they are still riveting magazines. I suppose I should encase them in some plastic balloon...

Well, I am going on about monetary value here, since I have whiffed some of it by mistake more than once. (as in don't get me started...)

but sentimental value, pay attention to that.

Various people have varying points of view on sentiment.

When I was married, not allllllllll so long ago, back around the early nineties, my husband and his brother's parents died, farely closely together.

Both of them, and certainly me too, had difficulties with the parents. I was older than they were and tried hard to keep my mouth shut, re insulting either parent, not just over a week, but over years. I knew their feelings were and are still thick.

After their mother died, my ex and his bro and his wee daughter and I tried to deal with their remaining things.

I remember it now as this double wide coach, with my niece having all our attention and all of us going through boxes and separating stuff into piles, and, sad to say, trash bags, as in sacks of catsup packets and sugar sacks...

they were depression oriented. And I don't blame them.

But to get to my point, people zero in on things for sentimental reasons, and sometimes that link is or seems tenuous...

and other times, a small seeming link has a rich story behind it.

If you are searching in the fields of friends or relatives' lives... listen to the quiet.

Why am I speaking here at all? A sense of pick the odd thing of value to you (never mind ebay). Time does fly.
Most of us don't understand how fast.

Notice your life.

I don't mean to sentimentalize your everyday.

Just notice some things, a leaf, a comment, a hat. And snap a picture, copy a post.

I post here at all that you might value stuff noticed.... later.

Yech, I was being dramatic again.

Back on how far to go as you move in....

Actually osso, I quite enjoyed your sentimental journey. The line that got me the most and hit me the deepest was

That was beautiful...

.......being kicked out by the bitch (pardon my French).

A girl kicked you out???????? That crazy b*tch!

Hehe, when I moved in with my boyfriend an later husband,
the very next day when he went to work, I rearranged
all he furniture and stashed an awful lot of hideous things
into the closets. Some of it, I threw into the trash.

When he came home that evening he was quite surprised
but actually liked the new look, and he never mentioned
the things that were missing and after a while I tossed
them too.

Needless to say, gustav would have a fieldtrip with me.

Damn CJ. Where'd you get that avatar? Looks like you and gus were MADE for each other.

Hardest thing? Leaving, after investing so much time and work into the house and garden. Into what became home. Into the man himself.

It just looks that way eoe, I'd kill gus with the sledge hammer he
left in the sink. Womens lib' seems to be a foreign subject to him.
No good for CJ.

CJ, did you know that women have tiny feet so that they can get closer to the sink?

Or is that just some anthropological mumble-jumble?