What do you keep and what do you choose to throw away?
Bonnie (Fowler) Cumbo is one of those super organized people that you come across every now and then. Her house is in good order despite the two teenagers, two dogs and a cat that inhabit it. Ever since Bonnie was a child, she’s always had a system and place for everything. And if there isn’t a place, it doesn’t need to be there.
Recycling.
“I’ve always tried to recycle. Then again, once you start recycling and putting things in their place, you get kind of obsessed about throwing stuff away.”
Bonnie will also go through the fridge once a week to make sure there isn’t any spoiled food that her (scavenger) kids will go through.
But there are some things that Bonnie doesn’t throw away.
Letters.
“I think I’ve saved all the cards that I’ve ever gotten; I like saving things that are special like cards and pictures. Of course, a lot of other mail is not useful so that gets thrown away.”
Letters are hard to come by in this digital age. Whenever Bonnie receives a letter, she puts it in a shoebox in her closet. When the shoebox gets full, she transfers the letters up to a bigger box in the attic.
“I don’t know why I keep so many letters. Maybe I think that when I’m old I’m gonna sit and read them all or something… I know it sounds crazy.”
Clothes.
In the summer, once school is out, Bonnie goes through her closet. If it hasn’t been worn for a year or two, it gets donated.
“Fred is pretty good about keeping his closet clean too, except for those fraternity t-shirts – he has about a million of those and I don’t know what he’s going to do with all of them.”
There are one or two special pieces of clothing that Bonnie has kept over the years: clothes that remind her of her kids. Teenagers outgrow their clothes in a heartbeat. Now that her kids have caught up (and surpassed) her size, she’s been able to keep some of them.
“I do like to keep some of Claire’s stuff, but a lot of it is too young.”
“I also have to help Colin rotate through some of his stuff and actually kept one or two of his flannel shirts for myself because they fit pretty well.”
Throwing things out is easy for some and hard for others. For Bonnie, things fall into the categories of what is practical and impractical to keep. Yet somehow some of things that don’t seem practical, like a blanket or a pillow, are kept.
Sentimental value.
Is it irrational to keep something for sentimental value when it will almost never be visited again? For what purpose does one keep the blankies and silky pillows that one had as a child? Can these objects with meaning take us back to the scenes drenched with emotions and nostalgia? Or can they serve as stories, told to future generations, to shed light on who we really are and where we come from?
Memories from the branches of Fowler and Wong 