Dealing with all the accumulated property--sorting, giving things away, estate sales, etc, etc--can be a lot of work (or people can be found to do it for you).

Like your children.

So, here we are hard at work cleaning out my parents' house. I managed to get open an overstuffed dresser drawer and found "greeting cards not from family." On top was a note in my mother's distinctive hand saying, "By now you're probably thinking 'she never threw anything away.'" I muttered, "Honey, you're about six drawers too late."

Cousin Barbara got the "best find" award. It was she who came across my paternal grandmother's canceled checks tucked in a corner of the garage in a cigar box. Perfectly reasonable story for how they got to the garage. Right after I got out of high school my childhood home was mortally wounded by a tornado. Mom was in the hospital, the house was fixin' to fall into the basement, and friends and family came to help box up everything that could be salvaged and get it into storage. After my parents moved into their new home everything came from storage into the new house, and that particular box must have made its way to the corner of the garage, never to be seen again.

That did not explain, however, why on June 8, 1966, the date of the tornado, they still had the canceled checks of my grandmother, who died in 1946.

Pitch, folks, pitch!

Phil
Rule Your Retirement Home Fool