On Other People's Stuff

Boxes, musings, and estate sales

Today makes one month since I recruited my friends and family to help move furniture into my new home. In that time, I have spent more brain power than is probably healthy thinking about stuff. 

Stuff may be one of the least descriptive nouns in the English language, but it is the only word I can think to use to encapsulate what has been on my mind (and in my way). For me, stuff includes my larger pieces of furniture like my very heavy desk but also the rubbermaid tubs full of markers, tape, papers, journals, and a million other things that I have not felt motivated to unpack and return to my desk drawers. Stuff includes our mismatched dinnerware–Ian’s grandma’s old plates mixed with my blue Fiestaware, drinking glasses bought from Target mixed with a collection of mugs carefully amassed across my life, a teapot that I bought for Ian when we moved into the first apartment that was ours with the idea that we would sit outside and drink tea together sitting beside a teapot that was thrown into the cart at IKEA because ooh look, it has a built-in strainer! 

In my brain, stuff does not discriminate. The particle-board coffee table and end table that Ian bought for $15 apiece when he had to furnish his first apartment, which have since followed us to two different homes = stuff. The family heirloom chair with artfully carved arms and legs that sat in the corner of my parents’ bedroom throughout my childhood before finding a home with me = also stuff. As our home comes together, it is proving to be an eclectic combination of things bought to fill base necessities when we were broke college students and in our early twenties, things bought when we first had sufficient disposable income to go to IKEA for fun (my yellow wingback reading chair–technically called a strandmon–will forever be a prized possession), and vintage pieces that have slowly worked their way into the mix. 

Featured here: my beloved strandmon, which is Asher’s favorite piece of furniture as well. 

Onto the subject at hand, which is actually other people’s stuff, I am someone who loves to buy things second-hand. Goodwill is one of my favorite places to shop for clothes–it is good for the wallet and good for the environment (fast fashion is a cancer to our society, and that is a hill I will die on). I also love a good used bookstore. You can’t go in expecting to find a set novel, but I am always on the lookout for pretty editions of classics and/or anything Isabel Allende. 

Featured here: a pristine copy of Shadow and Bone that I found serendipitously for $1.50 at a used bookstore in Wheeling. 

And of course, as I previously mentioned, collecting second-hand/vintage furniture has become very enjoyable to me as well now that I actually have the space and money for the furniture that I want. We have accrued some pieces at antique stores, including an emerald green wingback chair (which is much older and more regal-looking than my IKEA chair) and a small wooden jewelry box embossed with roses (Ian said, and I quote, “that better not be haunted,” when I picked it out at an antique store downtown). 

While I do love a good antique store, the used items in my home that are most treasured are those with a more personal history. My husband tends to cycle through hobbies and has had a sporadic interest in sewing. Currently sitting in a downstairs room that we are still not sure exactly what to do with is his grandma’s old sewing machine. I, of course, love to write, and perched on the corner of my desk (currently watching me type away on my computer) is Ian’s grandpa’s old typewriter. The second-hand item in our home that has gotten the most use by far is a record player that belonged to an old friend of my mother-in-law. In the year or so that we have had the record player, I have had the best time collecting records, new and old. 

To be completely blunt and perhaps a little bit morbid, my husband is much more intimately acquainted with death than I am. He has lost many family members in his twenty-six years of life, while my biggest loss has been my Grandma Ellen, who passed away at age 77 back in 2021. Ian’s most recent loss was his Aunt Cathy, his dad’s sister, who passed away last week. He took off work last Friday so that we could go look through Cathy’s stuff with his mom, other aunt, uncle, and cousin. Then, ironically enough, we hit up an estate sale a few blocks from our new house on Saturday. All of this is to say that I have recently spent a good deal of time looking through the belongings of the deceased, which has evoked all of the fun memories of going through my grandma’s belongings after she died. 

My grandma was a part of the generation/socioeconomic class that grew up with next to nothing and then decided to buy as much stuff as she could when she had the means to do so. She grew up on a farm using an outhouse, was a single mom through the 70s and 80s after her first divorce, married into wealth when I was a baby, and died with more jewelry, clothes, shoes, and purses than the human mind can comprehend. My family spent at least a week sorting through her belongings after she passed, trying to decide what to keep, what to donate, and what to sell. 

Grandma Ellen and I were pretty much polar opposites. I was generally uninterested in most of her purses and clothing, except for a Coach messenger bag that I carry regularly (it tends to make purse connoisseurs at both outlet stores and vintage stores salivate) and several sweatshirts and tee shirts that she rarely wore. At one point, my mom laughed and said that Grandma Ellen was no doubt turning in her grave (or box, as she was cremated) because one of the outfits I chose to keep was a pair of paint-splattered sweats. 

(What can I say? I love a good sweat suit.) 

The one piece of furniture that I chose to take from my grandma’s collection was her vanity. I cannot say exactly why I wanted to keep the vanity–I do not wear makeup and, as such, have no practical use for it. Something about the piece is just stately, and I like the way it looks. On top of that, when I look at the vanity, which now resides in our spare bedroom, I can see my grandma sitting with curlers in her hair and a silk nightgown on, always looking so classy, even at eight in the morning on a Saturday after my siblings and I spent the night. 

I have come to realize that I write about my grandma a lot. Like a lot a lot. It is very normal for a grandparent to be a person’s first loss, and it’s frankly quite impressive that I made it into my 20s with six living grandparents. I wonder if other people carry their deceased in the back of their minds like I do–sometimes she’s a ray of light; other times she’s more of a shadow. 

I sometimes wrestle with the knowledge that I was my grandma’s least favorite grandchild. I do not say this to gather sympathy or a heartened, Alexa, that is not true! I know what I know, and it is that my grandma went to her deathbed disappointed with my career choices. 

Even before she became disappointed with me for wasting my talents, I knew that I was not her favorite. Grandma Ellen was a classic Boy Mom, and the favoritism she showered on my brother did not go unnoticed. Grandma Ellen was also BIG into the idea of classic femininity, which my sister has always embodied more than I have. She had these nicknames for us–Dylan was “prince,” Cassidy was “princess,” and I was “angel” (although some of my feistiness in those days made me anything but). When we had colored items, such as Easter baskets, Dylan was blue, Cassidy was pink, and I was yellow. I was neither her special grandson nor her special granddaughter but a secret third thing. 

Again, I do not want sympathy, nor anyone to tell me that my feelings are unfounded. I just want to say that our relationship was complex, but I miss her dearly and know that she loved me very much, despite everything. There are so many things about my grandma and our family traditions that I am absolutely desperate not to forget. I do not want to forget how she always labeled her punch bowl “non-alcoholic punch” during her New Year’s Eve parties or how she put out dry-erase place cards with our “seating assignments” for Thanksgiving (I would frequency erase part of Cassidy’s name to make it say “ass”--as I said before, I could be quite rotten) or how my uncle, dad, siblings, and I would hide her Easter bunny (sometimes going so far as to drape it over the chandelier) or even how she would wear sunglasses when she didn’t have time to put on eye makeup. 

Going through Cathy’s stuff last Friday was also like taking a walk down memory lane, albeit more of a journey through someone else’s memories. My mother-in-law and my husband also had a contentious relationship with their late relative. She was frequently unkind, which may be in poor taste to say, but we have already established that I have no qualms speaking ill of the dead. 

My favorite parts of going through Cathy’s things were 1. looking through her records, many of which belonged to Ian’s dad, and 2. looking at pictures of Ian as a baby. 

(Have you ever seen a cuter baby? I haven’t.) 

Going to an estate sale the day after sorting through Cathy’s things left me deep in thought about the history and family memories associated with all of the furniture/belongings we looked through. I do not know any of the stories or memories that fill that now-vacated house, but its beautiful halls (this was the sort of house that was full of character, one that I hope and pray will not be gutted and painted gray) certainly held many. 

At one point in time, I found a decorative box labeled “bridal memories.” Of course I had to open it; what else would you expect from me of all people? Inside, there were no wedding pictures but instead a single letter without a date or signature. 

The letter was evidently from someone else and described the writer’s new dwelling in a nursing home, where he or she “expected to die.” The letter was morbid and sad and finished with the following lines: 

“I hope you can understand this. I don’t have great use of my hands. Continue to remember me.” 

It absolutely gutted me that there was no date on the letter–it could have been written last year or twenty years ago for all I know–but more importantly that there was no name. Nevertheless, I found myself sending a quiet thought to the writer, wherever they are. 

I found your letter, I thought. You are remembered. 

All of this lands me to where I am today, right now, wondering if I will be remembered. To be quite honest, most people are forgotten after two or three generations, and I am sure that I will be no different. Somehow, despite all of my other existential fears, the thought does not bother me at all. 

Of all of the pieces of furniture in our new home, my favorite is a bookshelf that was made from a tree in my husband’s backyard. We have been slowly but surely filling it with our records, and I hope that the shelf gets plenty of use from us and then from someone else once we are gone. 

Our bookshelf + the Evita soundtrack, purchased used for $1

Ian standing by the tree from which the bookshelf was made. 

In the end, stuff is just stuff, but boy does some of it have a great story. 

Until next time, 

Alexa