Adventures in Rummage and Resale: Possessed by Your Possessions?

When I started this blog a few months ago, I envisioned weekly posts, with helpful tips for both having and shopping rummage sales, along with details of my recent finds. That hasn’t happened. The summer rummage season is usually fun and exciting for me. But I haven’t had much desire nor time to go to rummage sales this summer.

Instead, I’ve been working hard on a difficult task: preparing for the sale of a lifetime of possessions. 

My mom passed away six weeks ago. It was not unexpected—she was 82 and had numerous health issues—but still a shock.  From the time I was a child, she was the person who got me started on secondhand shopping, and she taught me many of the techniques I still use when I have a rummage sale. In an ironic twist, I got the phone call informing me that something had happened to her while I was at a rummage sale—the same weekend my Girl Scout troop was having their sale at my house.  I had planned to call mom that evening and tell her how successful the sale had been, but never got that chance.

Once the initial tasks were completed—memorial service, many hugs and tears, taking care of all the financial and legal matters—my brothers and I were faced with a monumental decision: What to do with her house and possessions? Our dad passed away three years earlier. Mom had dealt with his clothing and tools, but the house (bigger than the one where they raised four children) was still very, very full of stuff. 

Mom grew up during the Depression. She had little and appreciated everything she got. She kept the set of three simple jigsaw puzzles she received as a gift when she was eight years old. We found a note with them indicating that it was the first new toy she could remember receiving. As she grew up and times got better, she continued to value her belongings. She could open a cupboard of glassware and recite who had given her particular items as wedding gifts. She loved pretty things and decorating her home.

Her children came, grew, and left home. She and my dad bought a newer house and moved every single thing from the old house. Once I had a home of my own, she delivered boxes of my childhood toys and belongings to me, laughingly saying she needed the space. But what we didn’t realize is that it was true—she was continuing to accumulate the things she loved. She’d have a rummage sale every year and said she got rid of a lot, but when we’d visit, we didn’t notice any empty space developing.

As her health declined, we talked to her about moving to a smaller place, or an assisted living facility. That sent her into a panic—she couldn’t bear the possibility of having to get rid of her things. But it wasn’t until after her death that we began to understand why, as we realized just how much she had accumulated. We walked through her home, looking at every thing in every room and began to feel suffocated. 

She wasn’t a hoarder like those you see on TV, whose homes you can’t even walk through. She was an orderly hoarder. The house was always neat and everything had a specific place. Closets, cupboards and drawers were all full to the brim, and very organized. She spent hours painstakingly cutting cardboard boxes into just the right size to create drawer dividers and closet organizers and utilize every square inch of storage space.

She didn’t set out to collect any particular thing. She had lots of small collections of items she liked and happened to find: ceramic birds, cookbooks, aprons, handkerchiefs, milk glass, costume jewelry, fancy glassware, and more. There were three cupboards filled with vases. Some were the simple inexpensive vases that come from any floral shop; others were antiques with recognizable brand names like Hull, Red Wing, and McCoy. Four sets of china, five sets of flatware, and dozens of linen tablecloths and doilies—you’d think she entertained every week, but she didn’t. She was convinced that it was all valuable and worth a lot of money. Many items had notes attached indicating a dollar amount that she’d found in books about collectibles that she’d check out from the library.

But what were we to do with it all? My brothers and I are grown adults, with fully-furnished homes of our own. So we dug in to the task at hand: clearing the house of stuff so that it could be listed for sale. We may have seemed ruthless, making an initial pass through and throwing away a lot of things that we deemed old, worn out, or useless. A lot of other things went to charity. We all took some items that would remind us of her, not necessarily the supposedly valuable, collectible stuff, and shared other mementos with relatives, friends, and neighbors.

We got down to the furniture and a large amount of other things, which we thought others might be interested in buying. While having an estate sale would be the norm around here, we were told that in her rural community an auction was the way to go. So we met with an auctioneer, set a date, and started to organize and move stuff for the sale.

We thought it would take a day or two. It hasn’t. My brothers carried load after load to the garage. One of them observed that in order to accumulate so much stuff, mom must have brought something new into the house every time she came through the door!  My cousins spent hours helping me box up glassware, sort through Christmas decorations, and empty drawers.

All of this has led me to a lot of introspection about possessions, what they mean to us, and what our relationship with them says about us. Whenever we’d call mom, she’d talk about how busy she was and we wondered just what it was she was busy doing. It’s apparent now—she was busy taking care of her stuff.  She was like the curator of her own personal museum. Her possessions possessed her. And at what cost? Did she forego opportunities to do things with her friends? Did it take time away that she could have spent in a more enjoyable fashion? Or was this what she truly loved to do? How was her life impacted because she valued possessions over people, stuff over relationships, acquiring over experiencing?

The other question that arose is how much is enough? Mom obviously believed that if having one of something was good, having three of them was even better.  She was an extreme couponer, too, as evidenced by the ten containers of hand soap, 24 rolls of paper towels, eight new cans of hairspray, and vast amounts of canned food. But I’m a fine one to talk—hey, I collect dishes and have more of them than I care to admit.

I’m sure she’d be unhappy and disappointed in us because many of the things she acquired are going to be sold to strangers, and that makes me sad. But what other choice did we have? My grief has been tinged with anger over the time and energy we’ve expended dealing with this and frustration that she apparently found a sense of validation by how much was in her house. 

So it’s no wonder that I’ve pulled my car up to several rummage sales this summer and then drove on, unable to render enough enthusiasm to get out, walk down that driveway, and look at someone else’s stuff. I’m sure I’ll get my mojo back in time, but I think I’m always going to be a bit more cautious about how much I drag home and more liberal as I clean my closets and collect items for charity or a rummage sale. 

In the meantime, Saturday is auction day! The weather forecast is good and after two more days of work, everything should be ready to go. By Saturday night, it will all be gone and we can have the house cleaned and prepped for sale. 

In the future, I will be reminded of my mom every day, in a thousand different ways. Like every time I use her old red-handled potato masher that’s now in my kitchen drawer, or hang the treasured family ornaments on my tree this Christmas.  But I want to make sure that I place a higher priority on the memories and life lessons she gave me that can never be taken away, or boxed up and sold. And that may be the most valuable “thing” that I’ll take away from this whole process.

Thanks for allowing me this personal indulgence.  In the next week or two, I hope to be back posting more typical blog fare. And hey, if you’d like to take a road trip on Saturday and check out a really awesome auction in Monroe, here are the details-- http://madison.craigslist.org/gms/2526071451.html--be sure to say hi to me!