Responsibility Reminder

For two years during the pandemic, I cleaned out my childhood home where my dad lived; the home of a collector of things. I spent countless hours organizing, cleaning, researching, selling, donating, and purging in all sorts of ways. It was a great pandemic project while events weren't happening and certainly helped clean out the house to sell it. But, it completely burnt me out. Over the past couple of years, I haven't been as inspired as I once was to resell things. What once was fun just stressed me out. But after my dad's passing in May, I began to feel more inspired to find homes for his remaining things. And it's been nice sharing pieces of his massive Volkswagen collection with his family, friends, and other people that I know who have a Volkswagen.

As I felt that inspiration to purge again, I decided to start going through some of my dad's "smaller" collections that I had not gotten around to during the pandemic. Doing a box at a time seemed much more manageable than the room at a time that I dealt with before. So, I recently dove into the postcards and greeting cards that he had from my great uncle in the early 1900s.

I feel like I owe it to my family and to my dad to find homes for things in the right way. But the right way doesn't have to take so much of my energy and time. After this past weekend, I started to see that it was doing just that and I was on a path to do more. The more I research, the more I sell, the more I pack, the more I do waste some of my time.

Surrounded by some of my dad's matchbox car collection.

I can't be responsible for everyone else's excess and everyone else's waste. I've learned this through my work with STAY VOCAL and T-Shirts too.

I need to be responsible for my stuff. And I need to be the one encouraging others to deal with their own excess and waste and connecting them with the right people and the right solutions.

I can't and don't want to be the one doing something with "the stuff." The more time I focus on that, the less time I have for my real work with reuse.

All that said, I'm so glad that I started doing the eBay listings again, so I could be reminded of what I need to be doing and NOT doing. Fortunately this time, it took just a couple of weeks, not a couple of years.

And this isn't to say that I'm done selling things completely. I do find "treasure hunting" fun. But it has to be a very small side gig and not interfere with my regular day. Speed and delegation need to be valued much higher.

Like yesterday, I sold a whole bunch of postcards and greeting cards in bulk to one person. We ended up having a great conversation about collectibles, upcycling, my other work with reuse, etc. That's more of how I can help get rid of stuff and do the work that I need to be doing. Not to mention, those in-person connections and conversations are what we all need more of right now.

For more on this topic, here are my thoughts on A Responsibility For Our Legacy Curious about my dad's massive Volkswagen collection? Here are the vintage postcards and greeting cards that I was working on.

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