Living Large In Our Little House

One fall, my mother allowed me to choose some wax Halloween fig­ures at the Dime Store to help dec­o­rate our house. She spent a dime to .49 cents for the lit­tle wax witches, ghosts and pump­kins. That was in the 1960s.

I’ve read these days that col­lec­tors think they’re worth much more, but to me, it’s really all about the sen­ti­men­tal value of these lit­tle scary guys.

A cou­ple of week­ends ago, we spent one whole day going through the approx­i­mately 100 boxes of stuff in our metal stor­age build­ing look­ing for those fig­ures, as well as the rest of my hol­i­day sea­son décor.

Yes, it’s true; nearly two years after our move, we still are deal­ing with stuff, and this is the stuff that has sur­vived two purg­ing episodes – one before, and one after the big move.

The stuff is out of sight, out of mind on a daily basis, but when we go into the dark cor­ner of our metal stor­age build­ing where those boxes are, we turn into dif­fer­ent peo­ple. In our 30-year rela­tion­ship, we’ve learned to work together as a team in most sit­u­a­tions. Maybe more impor­tantly, we don’t take things too seri­ously. Most of the time, we can’t even fin­ish an argu­ment with­out laugh­ing at the absur­dity of get­ting huffy over the lit­tle things in life.

When we embark on a quest to find some­thing we’re miss­ing from our old lives, though, watch out. Our usu­ally high energy lev­els drop, we get moody and snippy. Sometimes we yell. We sulk. We become, well, possessed.

On that warm August day sev­eral weeks ago, we climbed lad­ders, crawled on the floor and even fought creepy spi­ders of the live vari­ety. He handed me boxes and I opened every sin­gle one – with the excep­tion of the pro­fes­sion­ally packed boxes labeled “dishes” or “antique dishes.”

I told my hus­band near the end of the search I was afraid the Halloween dec­o­ra­tions might have mis­tak­enly went out with the 50 or so boxes meant for the Salvation Army thrift store last year.

“Is that what this is all about….Halloween dec­o­ra­tions? Good golly,” he said in a huff.

The only thing I found was a Halloween tree my mother made me when she was craft­ing pro­fes­sion­ally (pic­tured on the front page), a St. Paddy’s Day and Easter door dec­o­ra­tion and a Thanksgiving turkey cen­ter­piece bas­ket packed in what else? A box with pots and pans. But that’s how the move went 2 years ago. When you sell your house within 5 days of putting it on the mar­ket – and have to attend your daughter’s wed­ding in Germany the day after new own­ers take pos­ses­sion of your house – things just get packed. It doesn’t’ mat­ter where.

We don’t have kids and we sure don’t have trick or treaters, but we are host­ing guests here at The Little House in October and I want it to feel homey. Decorating for the hol­i­days is part of what makes a house a home to me.

At the end of the day, I became filled with anx­i­ety that the décor was lost for­ever. But the more I thought about it, the more I real­ized what’s even scarier is the per­son I become when think­ing about The Stuff and how it can haunt me.

My con­clu­sion: Four wax Halloween fig­urines and other hol­i­day décor: Worth prob­a­bly less than $50. My time spent look­ing for and wor­ry­ing about them: Too much.
Finally real­iz­ing it’s time for new décor to go with our new tra­di­tions any­way: Priceless.

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Today's Poll: After a big move, how long has it taken you to unpack all of your boxes? Are there things you never found again?