spent some time in my attic…PURGING…felt so good to throw out the things i will never use/need again. i cannot believe the ridiculous amount of crap i saved! (i’m not a hoarder but still…)
there are SO MANY pictures from high school, college and beyond. i have a freaking key chain (and loads of other photos) with a small picture of (real housewives) bethenny and me…oh the frosted makeup we wore at 20!
nothing is organized.. i don’t know how to begin to catalog my photos. open to suggestions.
overall i was a cute teen/twenties girl…who knew!
why is looking back cruel like that?! i spent so many hours (then) agonizing over how not good enough/pretty enough i was. wasted time.
i did come across some priceless letters from my mother that made me both laugh AND cry. i may scan some of what i found from her…she was so zany and funny! every letter ends with "i love you" and "xoxo" i am definitely her daughter! gd i miss her. still have my moments of disbelief that she’s gone.
and i found a few flirt notes (foreplay) i had written back and forth with an ex crush during law school. i was such a girl! i wrote what i looked for in a guy (actually made "the list") and we talked about what kind of kissing is best…and he told me how "radiant" i looked one day. i had forgotten this silly fun period in my life! it seems i remember all the angst of that time, but not so much of the joy.
i also found a few letters i had written post break up with a boyfriend…OMG i am so glad i didn’t send him these letters because i was so pathetic and emotionally open- the kind of open you regret the minute you share!
reading them the other day made my face flush and brought me back to that shameful not worthy feeling.
and i’m not sure if it is comforting or troubling that i seem to be very similar in mind to who i was at 22…clearly more secure now, and slightly less dramatic but substantially the same.
i will surely be spending more time sifting through memories in my attic. such a gift to visit my younger self and be reminded of who i was and what i was thinking.
also, such a (big) kick in the ass reminding me stop WASTING time dwelling on what doesn’t matter.
it all goes so fast.
when was the last time you went through your attic?!
xxx
jennifer
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You are such an insightful woman! Your Mom is w/ you always and it is certain she is proud of the lovely person you are. You make so many people smile. XO
I recently cleaned and discarded items from so long ago. I spent countless hours reading sorting and looking at all the items that had been saved from my “younger” years giving me an awakening that so many years had past, but that more years were to be lived and enjoyed. I tucked many back into the boxes too precious to trash.
Youth is wasted on the young … only if we realized this when we were young, but we were loving living.
I can relate, I look at old pictures and wish I was as fat as I thought I was back then. If only I knew!
Jenn I am going through a symbolic “attic cleaning”.A month ago my husband of 6 yrs walked out on me with no warning.One day things seemed fine…next day gone.Emptied bank acct and maxed out credit cards,left me with nothing and went to Michigan to the ex wife whom I found out he had been having affair with.I am devastated.As i walk around our house and think of packing up personal mementos of our life together I wonder if I will ever be able to look back and not feel so much pain..
Please, when you, or anybody, figure out how to organize and catalog these things, pictures, letters, post cards, please, please, please share. I haveng so many, many boxes, of not just my personal things but have also been given several boxes of two of my great Aunts, my mothers, my husbands. Since my two great aunts were sisters I have duplicates of many, also their last surviving sister is passing along pictures she has to me that related directly to me, but I really need to take care of all of these things, I feel scanning is important, I have one set of very old tin types, so need to learn what to do to save them. Since I started working on these, the digital storage has changed, from floppy discs to mini hard drives, how do I wrap my mind around this whole process and keep it accessible to the future generations for when they become curious about family or do I worry about that, that far ahead. It can get to be too mind boggling.
Connie
Jenny, bless you. Your walk down memory lane seemed joyful and glorious. Peace be with you.
I know the feeling and good to know you are
working on the missing and moving into the enjoyment of your own family..
jenn ,how carthaic for you. bunny loved you.you are able to recconnect with your mom. i heard here voice on heranswering machine. i hear my mom in my head. when i cough i reminds me of my mom.many of her habits .i also ahare. i feel close when i cook. mac &cheese.i make it excatlylike my mokm did .my mom in ton.s of gold jewlery, sky high teased updo. classy mom. catherine . grand dame. major fashionsta!!!!!!
My adive to you: Don’t dwell too long on those old moments. Just let it bring ‘that smile’ and acknowledge it. I’ve seen that video of you at the US Open and you SURE are a Cutie!!!!!!!!!!!!
I dare you to post those letters…
Thank you Jennifer, this was a really sweet and inspiring blog. Good to look back on ourselves from time to time.
I don’t have an attic.
We don’t have attics here in Vegas, I guess it’s a good thing… but just had to go through a whole lot of memories while packing my dad moving him to a senior community, oh and the pictures of our entire lives. I don’t know how many times I said oh my look at my hair! ha Good times!
I wish I could go though stuff from my teens….but…almost all was lost in a house fire. But …thank God I have the memories.
I try not to retain much in the way of goods. I do keep journals (five complete vols spanning 3 decades) and I keep photos. I no longer have books or newspapers. I buy everything in Kindle form just to reduce clutter.
I try to make it a Dec. 31 ritual to reread journals, review my life and start each New Year anew, so to speak. It’s such a great feeling.
We all have things like this whether we admit it or not. How funny! I know my friend saved some note I’d written her in middle school or early high school and when we saw each other many years later she read it to me and I was horrified that I’d ever even said such stupid and embarrassing things like that. I think if you didn’t express your feelings in silly little writings and collages you wouldn’t be normal. Another time I had something personal I’d written and a jerk guy stole it and passed it around to everyone making fun of me and I wanted to die!!!!! However, I survived that experience anyway and live to tell you about it now to make you feel better. 😉 Just thank GOD every day that you weren’t 22 when they had Facebook or it would have been all out there for everyone to see and take and save and re-publish, etc. There is a young girl I worked w/ that puts all that stuff on her Facebook and MySpace pages.
I think the same things about myself when I was 20 – I never knew how good it really was.
Personally, I keep all my old letters, notes, photos and stuff in a big armoire. Then I have it when I need it. And I organize it according to year so that if I’m feeling nostalgic, I can find what I need.
Jennifer
You are an amazing writer…….have you ever thought of writing a book? You just put into words a lot of what I have been thinking about……I had been scanning old photos and also realized how much wasted angst on things that don’t really matter…..please keep posting and I think you could write an amazing book….
have you ever read “saint maybe” by anne tyler? there’s a character in it whose job is to go through other people’s clutter (in attics, etc) and figure out what needs to be thrown out, what’s worth cherishing, etc…. an interesting job don’t you think?
I LOVE reading your posts. I am about the same age as you and when I look back at old pictures and letters I can almost recall the way I felt and thought at that time. Oh the luxury we have in our youth – to worry about the things that don’t matter. But don’t try to tell a young person that! I teach middle schoolers now and when I try to impart some of my “wisdom” I immediately remember that most have little to no grasp of mortality and time at that age. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts.
Have you baked anything lately, Jennifer? I love your baking pictures! They are hilarious!
There is a passage in Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” in which a character relays a story about a condemned but ultimately reprieved prisoner’s thoughts during what he believed were his last moments before his scheduled execution. Dostoevsky himself had been a prisoner in the same position, so it offers rare insight into whether we can follow through on our resolve to “appreciate every moment.” Scroll to “About twenty paces from the scaffold”: https://www.readprint.com/chapter-3484/The-Idiot-Fyodor-Dostoevsky
Sounds like you are doing better…how great.
Cleaned out my storage unit this spring. Found a box of letters from an old boy friend. I had forgotten that the last letter he sent (post break up) I had never opened. So 25 years later I opened and read the 20+ pages at 1am. I”M SUCH AN IDIOT! I never really understood what a great relationship we had. STUPID! STUPID! STUPID! And to just to add insult to injury he’s now worth many millions. I vow to clean out every storage space in my house at least once a year for the rest of my life!
Thanks.
Jennifer..I can totally relate to the “the kind of open you regret the minute you share!” I recently got back into contact with my first love from high school and totally ran my mouth, let all my emotions FLOOD out and haven’t heard back from him! OOOPS!
Also, I look back at photos and think how great I looked in high school and never felt good enough or pretty enough, certainly not skinny enough. If I was now what I weighed then I’d be doing backflips and wearing bathing suits this summer with pride. UGH
Such a waste of time, so depressing.
Vermont Country Store sells: Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific, Lemon-Up and Beer on Tap shampoo.
I just recently reconnected with a friend on FB that had disappeared 14 years ago. She lives in Greece. This year is our 20 year class reunion but it’s not til next month and we had to do it sooner. So this last week we had 3 fabulous days together and on Saturday for the first time in more than 14 years the four girls got together again! So my 3 girlfriends and I had our own “class reunion” and it was fabulous. It’s fun to think of how it used to be and how we are now. I have done the same thing to myself. I used to beat myself up over how I looked and I look back and think that I was crazy to think that way. Meanwhile, my shape is not as great anymore but I’m more secure with me now.
I’m glad that you don’t hold back… you say what you think. I loved your show on 1970’s products, it was funny cause later on the Martha channel the beauty expert recommended “Prell” for someone who had overly color treated hair and I laughed out loud!!!
Thanks for the entertainment!
I must tell you Jennifer, this is one of your best blogs if not the best one that I’ve read. A few months ago I came across some letters that I wrote when I was in high school and I was pretty surprised when I read them. I was so angry and apparently unhappy, the weird thing is that I don’t remember ever feeling that angry, I really surprised myself.
Wow, what a great post. I loved reading it! I love reading my old diaries (Californians don’t have attics) and seeing how I was (I haven’t changed much since my teens.) Wish I had a suggestion on the photos issue. There is a website called evernote that you can store any type of file on forever. It’s pretty neat because you can access it from a home or work computer.
Don’t throw out the pictures.They are a visual legacy for your kids.Since they are disorganized and it’s too overwhelming to categorize them then maybe you can just put some names and approximate dates on the back.Your kids will love them when they are grown.
Maybe you should post some here.Maybe on FB.Wouldn’t your old BFF’s get a kick out of them?
Oh do shut up.
make piles. the catagories should be
-can show my husband
-can shoe my kids
-deny
Regarding photos – Begin by tossing any you don’t want to keep. Then, put in chronological order by year (as close as you can get, anyway 🙂 You can use shoeboxes to keep them in until you can put them in albums.
When I was in the hospital last week I watched a rerun of Martha. She put her pictures in books. It looked like such a nice idea to save pictures or letters from our kids, mother or whomever. I think it’s nice to look at those kind of letters etc. latter on. Don’t throw them away. Amy
OMG I have been doing the SAME thing! I have old term papers from college! The letters and poetry? What seemed so profound at the time now seems so juvenile and trite. I don’t think I’ll even open the journals! Most fun to me was the visits to other times through photos and letters to/from my dad and brother, both now gone.
What to DO with all of this STUFF? I guess I’ll save it for another 20 years, huh? OK Well I did purge… some!
Regarding your photos or slides: check out Scan Cafe.
jennifer,
i was inspired by your post to clean out my own room in preparation for the coming school year. while cleaning, i found my girl scout pin. filled with a sense of nostalgia, i made homemade thin mint girl scout cookies. check it out: https://www.bringinghomethebakin.wordpress.com
katharine
just wanted to say I think you are awsome and absolutely adorable!
Sorry your were in the hospital hope you are doing OK?
M.