Packrat Adventures

Day 1 of organizing my Dad's warehouse:
We are knee deep in junk mail and sales papers from as long ago as 1995 and as recent as yesterday. Interspersed are occasional receipts or business looking papers so it all must be sorted through. I wish that I could send a bill to all these junk mail senders for the time it is taking 4 of us to weed through it all--especially the "pre-approved" credit card senders who now make it necessary to open up the envelopes in order to shred the papers within that contain names, addresses, etc. I think about my friend, Seth who says that until people ban junk mail he cannot take any "save the environment" proposals seriously. I try to do my environmental part by separating out anything recyclable and taking it to the appropriate places.

Day 2 of organizing my Dad's warehouse:
Just when we think that we have gotten rid of all the junk mail, we come across another stack. "Never let me get this bad with saving stuff" I tell the people around me as well as a making a mental "note to self". We are delving deeper into the magnetic trinkets, parts and pieces for assembling, and some tools today. It is a hot sunny day in South Florida today and the magnitude of the job fatigues all of us. All shapes and sizes of magnets have been mixed together for decades and then pushed aside for more immediate tasks. Is this one of a kind or will we discover an entire box of this item? Before deciding whether to try to sell it or to recycle it we would really like to know. We break for lunch when my brain no longer processes what I am looking at. By the end of 2 days, we have made a dent in the warehouse and while we are happy about it realize that the road ahead is going to be a long one. I estimate that we have gone through maybe 1/20 of the warehouse's contents. Enough for this trip though, time to work on our own businesses and take care of our own daily lives.