Eureka!!!  Another box - another treasure trove.  I can't quite believe it!  So, here is the back story - you know, there has to be one!  Mike and I got married in 1985, once for the Navy in June and again here at home in September for friends and family.  At that time, my step-grandmother, Clara Lydick, was a busy quilter.  She made beautiful quilts, some with piecing material into patterns and some making the blocks using embroidered scenes she stitched herself.  All - and I mean every stitch - was hand-done.  No machine for her!  Right down to her signature!

So for our wedding, she made us a queen size double wedding ring - pink solid (for me) and navy blue small patterned material (for Mike).  We used it a good bit.  We also used a lightly busy quilt she had made be a few years before I met Mike.  I just loved them both - I've tried my hand at quilting and have a huge respect for those talented folks.

Back in 1994, Mike's parents were coming East, traveling across the country, putting small down payments on houses for those of their children who didn't own, but rented instead.  That would have been us, for one!!~  We were frantically getting ready for them - we lived in a small-ish (though 2 story) house in Vienna but not much room for company.

So, we got a storeroom and packed up a bunch of stuff to make a spare room ready for them.  We decided in tape the boxes with blue painters' tape - that way we would know those were recent deposits to the storeroom in the event it may be a while before we would access them.  And, not much time for fancy labels or lists as the Griffings would be here any day that year!

Who knew it would be 20 years before these blue taped items would surface!?!?!?  Sad and embarrassing to say, but there you go!   We knew these boxes made their way from storeroom an attic or basement and perhaps another storeroom, like a carousel - "Where she stops, nobody knows!!" as the carnival barkers used to say.   But to actually get to delve into them was not to be.

Till NOW!!  Our beloved quilts have surfaced after being nicely folded in a light plastic trash bag in a cardboard box - none the worse for being hidden all that time.  A trace of an older closed-up fabric smell, but nothing a nice tumble in the dryer won't fix.  We thought we'd try that tonight since our once balmy weather (last week between 50 and 60) has crashed - it's 18 out now with a wind chill of 2, at 10:15 on Sunday night, January17, 2016.  Full laundering tomorrow.

So - not a numbered box, not on a list, but fondly remembered and things are happy all around!  The quilts are breathing fresh air and I'm breathing a sigh of relief!

So - Box 55.  It's a small box as things go and was in one of the storerooms.  It's one I numbered myself which means it last had any attention mid-2014 at the very latest!  My list says it contains a Wolfgang Puck Versa Cooker Jr., or personal cooker.  What is that?  Why do I have it?  This brings us to a Confession Intermission.

I confess that I have a real penchant for kitchen gadgets, dishes, unique things, antique stuff, etc.  I have multiple sets of dishes, for instance, in addition to the ones that had belonged to Mom - and SHE had several sets!!  Talk about gene pools!!  Wolfgang Puck and Kitchen Aid top my list of acquisitions.  Well, those and Fiesta Ware.  Oh dear!!

Back to this WPVCJ in Box 55 - turns out it is what he is calling nowadays on the home shopping channels a Rice Cooker.  It holds about (maximum amount) 1.5 cups of rice and when water is added and cooking is done, the yield is 3 cups.  But, you can also do raw, hard pasta, mac/cheese, a cake and bread pudding in similar amounts.  Red in color.

Problem is - due to my collections of kitchen stuff and occasional impulse buys - I already HAVE a rice cooker that I discovered in an earlier box shortly after we moved here!!  It may have been Mom's - not sure.  White, Rival brand, larger capacity - can accommodate 5 cups of rice - YAY leftovers!!

Plus if the white one is not Mom's, I bought her one a few years ago.  None had been used till I discovered the white one!!  Pitiful, isn't it!?!

If you would like to have this Wolfgang Puck one, let me know.  Still in the original packing/shipping box.  Seriously.  Time to downsize...

Now, I need to find a box that doesn't contain something I already have 2 or more of.  Let me consult my list of known (my numbering) boxes and we'll see what surfaces.

More to come - so much more!!  And more interesting, too, I'd think.  Box 15, for instance, contains a HERD of cassette tapes that my wicked stepfather, Mac, recorded from albums (we now have those same albums, too, someplace).  The music ranges from classical and opera, gospel, patriotic, and country right up to the majestic Victory at Sea - a 12-album set, Elvis, Willie Nelson and last but not least, polka music - the fat lady polka is clearly labeled.  Hmmmmmm - how rude!!

Well, the professional movers - and I use that term VERY loosely - came with a verbal quote which in the end they did not honor.  I specifically asked the owner if the workers would label the boxes - what the general contents were or at least from what room - and he assured me that yes, they always did that and that his guys were great about keeping order.  NOT!!

I will grant that they came into quite the house FULL of stuff and had to make inroads however they could to get started.  Sort of a battle plan!  Somewhere along the line, I realized that they were indeed packing the boxes diligently, triple-wrapping most of the items (which makes for more bulk and thus more boxes needed...).  Okay, I thought, we're on our way!

Further down the line, I noticed (since I couldn't be in all places with all four of them at once) that they were  not marking a single box.  Nothing.  No labels, signs, cave drawings, nothing.  I sat down with one of the more intelligent of them while he packed a box, asking him to list the particular items (can't recall now why that exact box was so important).  "Sure thing" he said and very nicely wrote all the information on a flap.  Then he promptly folded that flap in so his notes were not visible, taped up the box, and continued on!!

So we have no clue what is in any of the hundred or so boxes they packed!!  Nor what area they were left in - main house, basement, separate garage, or the rented storerooms.  YIKES!!

By now we have gone through a lot of boxes in the house, many of which I packed and numbered myself.  And we are clearing out the storerooms in earnest, and so the game is on!!  Who can find what in which box that we need the most??  Which box contains our winter clothes, for example - oh - that's the one I had him mark - winter coats!!

So I am posting or blogging about our journey through the boxes.  I hope others find it interesting or can learn from it.  I hope it's therapeutic for me!!

More to come.  Box 55 comes up first!

About 18 months ago, my husband (Mike) and I moved across the Ohio River from Williamstown, WV to Marietta, OH.  We had been buying our WV property under Land Contract, which is to say we paid the seller directly rather than going through a bank.  We began to realize in 2013 or 2014 we were going to have to start downsizing.  I won't say we would qualify for Hoarders show, but we were beginning to look and feel like that at the Williamstown house!!

So, we plotted and planned and worked with a couple of realtors and found a great house in Marietta.  Problem?  Well, the new house was a double lot (good) with a separate 2-car garage with a loft (good) and two garages under the main house (also good).  The main living square footage is roughly 1700, not counting the basement (I think) - good enough.  HOWEVER, the place we were moving from had been a business and had 2800 sq ft of living space and 2800 of basement, 5600 in total.  OOPS!!

MOVE is a four-letter word in the most graphic sense, just so you know. DOWNSIZE is another, only compounding the problem, literally!!

The packing, sorting, tossing, donating, shoveling, and praying began the spring and summer of 2014.  We closed on the new house - a completely empty house that seemed to be large enough for two people, no pets - mid August 2014.  We didn't actually start paying that mortgage till October and didn't start staying in the new house till mid November 2014.

In the meantime, I tried to keep some order out of the chaos by packing a lot of our stuff myself, numbering and cataloging boxes so that we'd know just be looking up a number on the list what each box contained.  I got as far as 150 or so boxes.  Then we decided to call professional movers to finish.

That's for the next installment - what a tale it is, too!!