Iowa

Grandma's House

The first week in September Mom and I headed up to Iowa to work on the monumental task of cleaning out Grandma Memmelaar's house. She was, to put it mildly, a pack rat. She never threw out a single note written on a scrap of paper (found the one she wrote to herself about when Elvis died in 1977!) let alone the junk mail, clothes bought...you name it, she kept it. Here is a little review to show the work done (and there is still much left to do with the garage and basement virtually untouched when we left!) This is the upstairs bedroom "before"...

And after....Before.... And after...Many of the boxes held traveling "stuff"--every pamphlet and scrap from every trip taken was still in the house. She also had many boxes labeled "Countertop" and a year, filled with all the things from her kitchen countertop that she didn't go through, but kept, separated each week by a piece of newspaper as her filing system! She was also METICULOUS about labeling everything--from each outfit (what to wear it with or which jewelry matched) to which quilt belonged to great-grandma Meyer for her wedding, EVERYTHING had a little hand written note attached! Above is my Aunt Betty, cousin Jessie, and me and Mom--it was a long hard week of work, but I'm so thankful we were there together (mom's sister Ruth is snapping the photo)! Without them, this truly would have been impossible!

Here is the barn--it looks good inside and out! The grapes in the forefront of the picture were ripe and sweet--just DELICIOUS right off the vine!

Check out these celings in the barn! Someday I want to build a house and have ceilings that look like this!!

So all in all, it was a good bonding trip with Mom--hard to be away from Chris and Ry for so long, but the job needed to be done. We got to choose some items to take with us too, which was really special. I also learned just how important it is to be organized, hang on to those things that are truly important and toss the rest, and to pass down the important memories. I am so thankful for a great family and the chance to have a little closure from Grandma's passing--it was a difficult week at times, but worth it in the end.