This is the kitchen sink in which Stompy and Leo and Bunny and a lot of Claudia's dolls' clothes are taking a bath in the hopes of rendering them less depressing and clean and bright enough to be handed on to the next generation --who probably don't want them. Oh well, I can't possibly just chuck them out. Even after spending five years in a basement, they retain a certain charm.
The basement is full of all sorts of other things too. Every diary I ever wrote from the age of 13 --too cringe-making even for me to read. Family memoir with lots of facts wrong --probably.
The dolls, undressed and wrapped now in dryer sheets, look blank and bereft. I put the old 'antique' filter on them.
I have a most eccentric friend who goes to tag sales and buys up boxes of old photos of other people's relatives who then get displayed in her hall.
Clearing out stuff is such a complicated thing -- one has endlessly to weigh the sentimental value against the dire twin diseases of hoarding and clutter. And the things we hold on to, not because we want to but because someone else would be hurt if we didn't......
Two possible solutions would be to send for American Pickers and trade this junk in for moolah, or else for everyone to acquire a vast storage locker and deposit all their stuff into it.
Anyway, a very vexed question altogether and mildly depressing.
