First of all, have a great birthday!

On the subject of purging - it's funny, yesterday I was sitting, thinking. I thought, if we were to lose everything in a fire, how painful would it be? It would be horrible. How would I go on? I sat reflecting, and then I thought, wow, what a clean start.

Now I'm not considering arson as a method of housecleaning. I just realize we have so much accumulation of stuff. There are knick knacks, souvenirs, letters, photos that I haven't seen in years because they are packed away in tubs. And we've managed to get by without them. Do we really need them? It's an emotional tug-of-war, really.

Thanks for the wishes!

And I know what you mean. I have boxes and boxes of photos, which are piled up in a not-too-easily-accessed closet and wouldn't be grab-able if there were a fire. Which will change, now that you've mentioned that. The photos are really the one thing I wouldn't want to lose of all the keepsakes.

Happy Birthday!

You know those white store-all boxes for files? I've got like 179 of them in my garage... send help!

Heh -- I know how you feel. I went up into the attic yesterday to look at how complex that attic cleaning was going to be and sort of froze, frightened. How the attic has not caved in to the floor is a miracle, there is so much junk and boxes up there. I think I still have every single financial document (cancelled checks, etc.) from every year we've been married (22), plus every thing either kid ever touched with a pen, pencil or crayon, plus there is just something about having stored 3 billion empty boxes (in case I needed something to wrap presents in) which may have made it a tad worse. Add to that the heat (90 degrees outside, probably close to, and I'm not kidding, 130 in that attic), and I think we'll be saving the attic purge for late fall when it's cooled off. (Of course now we have to figure out why the attic vents aren't working.)

So I empathize, I really do. Lukcily, I have teenage boys who want to earn extra spending money who will think that milling around the attic, bringing boxes down for the burn pile is easy work. (They were on a jackhammer all day today in that 90 degree heat.)

Good thing my garage is on a concrete slab; if I had a real attic we'd be done for.

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