When you have an entire house and business to pack up, you have to celebrate the little victories. As I’ve been working through the house, I realize that I’ve done so much and there is so much to do that I keep going back to the same cabinets, drawers and closets, not remembering that I already emptied them. I decided I needed a system that didn’t involve keeping all of my cabinet doors perpetually open; a Sixth Sense moment in my kitchen.  So, I came up with a solution, using what was handy in the house.  When I finished packing up a cabinet and it’s empty, I stick a piece of green Frog Tape on it. It’s already been such a great visual cue for me to see what is done and what still needs to be done. And each time Jeff or I stick on a piece of green tape, we high five.

In this series, I was going to head in a lighter direction, since we talked about stuff with strings last time, but I decided to continue to wade in deep waters and write to those who are the “keeper of the stuff”. This is the person who ends up with all of the family stuff that “needs” to be preserved for future generation.  It’s not cut and dry, though.  There are different categories of keepers… 1.) Those who are willingly, perhaps even enthusiastically, stewards of family items. This is the easiest category to deal with, because they want the stuff and don’t mind giving up living or storage space to preserve some family history.  I would consider myself in this category. We have some boxes of family photos, genealogy books, papers to prove we’re descendants of those who fought in the Revolutionary war, my Opa’s WWII letters to his mom, mini-balls