When my father passed, my brothers and I, among a great many other things, set upon the task of clearing out the house. None of us were in a position to keep it, and maintaining the estate and running a rental was far too complicated, so it had to be sold. We cleaned it up and cleared it out, each of us taking the odd piece of furniture here and there, selling quite a bit in a garage sale and on craigslist, and then came the attic.
Stored up there were the things that had been put away as the boys grew up. All the toys. And we took them out and stored them at my brother’s house. Later, we gathered there and went through every plastic tub, throwing out the things that were irrevocably broken, and keeping the things that meant a great deal. At the end we had eleven containers, plastic tubs, full of toys not broken enough to throw away, not special or important enough to keep. And my brother couldn’t keep them at his house, he had for a while already and really wanted to be able to use his garage again. So I volunteered to take them and perhaps try to sell them. And in my garage these eleven containers sat, for months, for years.
Eventually my wife and I wanted to use our own garage and we rented a storage unit. Not just for the toys, that would be silly. We have a lot of things in the storage unit, but there the toys also went.
I think about them fairly regularly, sitting there, in the dark, doing nobody any good. Every now and then I think I’ll go get one or two bins and put the items up for sale on eBay or something. But then I don’t. It’s easier not to deal with them, not to decide to let them go.
Perhaps this spring we’ll have a yard sale. Maybe I’ll be ready then.