Here's where it gets intense.

In my office, I'm almost through all the financial/business papers, and getting down now to the really hard stuff…letters my parents wrote to each other, letters I was written in high school and college, datebooks from high school. Even the file of clippings my mom saved is tough, because she wrote notes on them, and it was the most recent file she kept, so it reflects her interests and passions in her last years.

At the same time, I've been in need of my father's parent's wills in order to claim some property that's turned up (that's a whole other story in and of itself) and I wasn't able to find them in all of their left-behind papers. Why did my parents save recipes, newspaper clippings, endless financial statements, checks, a huge collection of Absolut Vodka ads, the closing file from buying their house in 1975, but not their parents wills? Or death certificates? My parents' wills and death certificates are pretty much the most important, to-save papers in all of my Kondo-ing. I find it hard to believe my dad didn't save these things, but he was kind of disorganized. Did my mother throw them out at some point after he died, thinking she wouldn't need them, but she would need the Absolut ads? Did my grandparents even have wills? The strange byproduct of not being able to find the wills is that I am mad at parents about this.

Marie Kondo talks a bit about the emotional aspects of going through these types of papers. It's very hard for me because everything starts to swirl together: I'm mad because I can't find things they should have saved, I'm mad because they saved too many other useless things, and I'm also mad because it's hard for me to get rid of these useless things. Then I get mad because my hanging file breaks, and because my leg has fallen asleep under me as I sit awkwardly on the floor. When something like this happens,  I have to stop my tidying and go do something else for a bit. I'll come back to it all later.

(Next week there is free shredding in my town, so that's my office tidying deadline! I think I can make it and it's good to have a hard stop to it.)

Right after we brought my mom out here, when she was in sort of mid-stage dementia, she was living alone in this house even though she really should have had a full-time caregiver. I was trying to introduce that concept slowly, even though it really was an emergency, to go easy on her, because she was of course dead set against anyone taking care of her except me. I left her one night after having dinner with her, and drove to my house 10 minutes away. She called me as soon as I got home, freaking out because the television wasn't working (this was a common theme at this time). She was not only upset about this but very anxious and sad and really did not want to be left alone (and should not have been alone, to be fair). My husband and I came over, "fixed" the TV, calmed her down a bit, and then went back home. I called her when I got home and heard the familiar blare of her beloved MSNBC. Either she was feigning calm or really was OK, but she said flatly "I'm watching Chris Matthews," said goodnight, and hung up.

I found the below clipping last night; it's from 2008, several years before she really became sick. My parents were living in Washington, D.C. when they met and fell in love, and that city was so important to my mom for so many reasons, not just because of the romance with my dad but because of its political history (politics being her favorite thing) and also because she just thought it was beautiful. She makes a note on this article about what's really important about it: "Not about Chris Matthews — about view from window of a snowy Washington afternoon." I miss her of course, but what I miss for her is being able to have and enjoy her thoughts, observances, and memories.

Last week I did such an epic Kondo that I couldn't even bring myself to talk about it until now. I filed a box that had contained my personal files that I've been dragging around with me for 25 years or so, PLUS a box of college and high school stuff that had been parked at my mother's for all that time. It was so utterly headspinning. The best parts:
1. Tossing out the beat-up moving box the files were in
2. Thinning the files to about half by throwing out stuff
3. Learning things about myself that I had forgotten.

Apparently I went to see a play at UCLA in '82 or so that starred students Tim Robbins and Daphne Zuniga. Also, I took the GREs (something I vaguely remember doing) and sent transcripts to a number of potential graduate schools, from U. Virgina to U. Texas at Austin. I spent a good while imagining what might have happened if I ended up at any of those places.

A Kondo trick I learned this go-round….if you have saved notebooks but not used all of them, tear out just the pages you've used and save them! Great for not-entirely-used journals.

Here's the desk now! In those plastic boxes are letters and cards I was sent, oh, over the last 20 years oh so. That's going to be hell. At least I can now fit my feet under my desk!

Update on today

A snow day from work seems to be the best day for Kondo-ing. Today I made a huge dent in my desk filing. Of the items that fall under recent financial/health and other important stuff for me and my parents, I only have a few more files to go.

During the years when my mom was sick (and even before and after, to be truthful) I was not great about filing anything, even important papers related to her illness or our finances. I basically threw them in piles and bags and through some miracle was able to find things when I needed them.  Over the summer I rehabbed a huge file cabinet that had been my husband's, and started filing these items in there, a bit at a time.

Part of this process is I just get so overwhelmed by everything I'm working with. If it's not memories that are getting to me, it's the general feeling of intimidation that financial and health papers engender in me.

In the future, as far as financial/health docs go, I will attempt to file everything that needs filing immediately, and only have very "hot"/in progress papers out in the open. This is a Marie Kondo thing but also a very organized person thing. It's the way my husband operates and I am finally seeing the wisdom of it.

Here's a picture of my desk now…surrounding it is the next challenge...the "non-important" ephemera (that is actually very important to me): everything from every letter everyone ever wrote me, to all my papers from college, to my mom's collection of royal wedding clippings, to the closing documents from my parents buying their house in 1975...

 In a few months I hope there is NOTHING under this desk. Two things that I want to spend time doing in this area are things that mean a lot to me…writing songs and painting/drawing/crafting…and I need the creative and emotional space to do that.

During a break I hung out with my husband downstairs, and worked on another ongoing project…pulling photos out of a disintegrating album and putting them in a box. I only got through a few pages; it's going to take a while (as is the huge photo project that this is only a small part of). It's painstaking because I have to transfer my mother's notes to the back of them…if I don't I won't remember what the photos are! Anyway here's my mom and grandfather, who is inexplicably playing a ukulele.

The beginning, sort of

Today marks the first day that I am in earnest beginning the clean out of my house. I'm loosely following the system of Marie Kondo (author of the wonderful and often hilarious The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up). But I will definitely deviate and use my own methods along the way.

Why is this a big deal for me? In my current home is pretty much all my possessions ever (I'm about to turn 50), as well as all the possessions, papers, etc. that were in my mother's house, where she lived for 40 years. She died in October of 2013 and I've been very slow about going through her things. It seems like a hugely insurmountable task. She was a collector of everything from magazine articles to mustard pots (more on this to come, I'm sure) to books to wrapping paper to…you name it. The task of going through her things has come to symbolize something for me about moving on from her death. And the task of going through my things has come to symbolize my growing up somehow, turning a page, finding myself, as I face down 50. So doing them together should be pretty interesting and powerful.

In order to push myself through this task, I'm going to blog about it, if only for myself. I've set a goal for completion of November 1, 2015. I have definitely started already…the books and vinyl albums are pretty much gone through and organized…but I feel like I need some "officialness" to get myself the rest of the way. And it will be fun to post bits and pieces from it along the way, and remember my past and my family's past.