About Me

Trophies to Give Away, Memories to Keep

,1:26 pm

It’s funny how memory works. Last fall, in a fit of de-cluttering, I came across a storage bin full of old trophies: awards from various run/bike/swim events I’d competed in, cross-country ski loppets, mountain bike races. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, endurance sports were a big part of my life. […]

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Trophies I Gave Away

,1:25 pm

And away they went, six trophies from the run-bike-swim days of my mid-to-late twenties. Medals from cross-country ski  races. Toastmaster ribbons and certificates. A celebratory mug from law school… why is it that we keep these things? Come to think of it, why do we collect them in the first place? A question like that could […]

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Stuff I Gave Away – Today’s Shortlist

,8:08 pm

In today’s de-cluttering news, we have the damaged, the unused, the faded and the boring: • sandbox toys that were sun-faded and cracked; • perfectly good weather-stripping that we don’t need; • tennis balls faded to grey; • decorative Christmas twigs spray-painted a garish gold that have left sparkly droppings everywhere they’ve been for the […]

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De-Cluttering my Daughter’s Desk

,3:49 pm

I am sitting at my daughter’s desk attempting to cure her computer of a virus. There is a lot of waiting involved in this task, as the computer chugs through scans and multiples re-boots. As I sit, I contemplate the chaos of objects littering the surface of her desk. My daughter is much like her father, […]

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From What I Gave Away to What I Choose to Keep

,5:28 pm

Inevitably, when you choose to examine things you gave away, you end up with a pile of stuff worth keeping. And so I find myself here amidst a stack of favourite books,  my great-grandmother’s wedding ring (and to think I never knew that, she too, was a second-wife), a scribbled quote. It might be said […]

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Things I Gave Away: First Post

,8:59 pm

This is a blog about giving things away and letting go. There is the obvious: too small clothes, outgrown toys, dishes we don’t use anymore. There is the material (or the memorial?): the photo of my law school graduating class, love letters from my youth, my grandma’s fur cape. And then, there’s the intangible, the […]

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