When my parents died, they still lived in the house where I was born. They had no intentions of moving. Ever.

It was a big old Minnesota farm house. They added on to it many times, gradually molding it to their lifestyle and tastes. And it was filled with stuff. Bookshelves were plentiful – floor to ceiling, horizontal bands between door jams and ceilings, straight-ahead and above your head as you climbed three flights of stairs. And that was just the books.

They had built-in cupboards for all the old record albums as well as several generations of audio equipment. More for the photo albums, movies, and videos of every birthday party and family trip. Once my siblings and I left the nest, my parents traveled the world. Turkish canes, Thai pitchers, Siberian relics – art and memories from more countries than I can name – adorned apparently endless nooks. More cupboards were needed for the companion pamphlets and maps.

After each trip, they extolled the virtues of their peaceful, eclectic house, looked forward to reviewing their maps and photos, and enjoyed finding spaces for cherished mementos.

After they died, I took one look at the tremendous quantity of stuff and realized I had a choice. I could relive their lives or I could live my own. There was no way I could possibly do both. I chose the latter.

Two years later, our Urban Experiment brought us face to face with our own stuff. The store bought stuff was pretty easy to dispense with. We still have more than we need, though. Our city condo, a.k.a. tiny house, has just the right stuff, but there is more in storage, waiting to see the outcome of our urban year.

The other stuff, the stuff you can’t buy or replace, was a lot harder. The photos were keepers, obviously. The rest was not obvious. At least not to me. My husband, on the other hand, seemed quite certain. Maybe that’s why the vast majority of personal boxes have my name on them. Maybe that’s because he has a better memory!

I took photos of old year book pages and tossed the books, though I think my daughters needed to see the photos that were not there to take, the pictures of girls sports teams. Do they realize there weren’t any?

I also snapped pictures of trip mementos and maps. Like the theater programs from 1974 when the energy crisis found me in London attending live productions featuring Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Rex Harrison, Vanessa Redgrave, and Ingrid Bergman all in one week.

I kept the old calendars too; I think I’ll be quite surprised someday to see where all I’ve been! Assuming I ever look.

But there was more. From the distance of five months, I’m not sure what. Letters for sure. I thought it would be nice to read them once again before chucking them. I pictured myself in the house I was leaving, reading college era words from friends, my little sister, and my parents, among others. Now that I am in Boston, with a banquet of walks, museums, concerts, theater productions, boat trips, and lectures outside my door, I wonder if there will ever be time. Even without that banquet, there are more books and movies than I’ll never get to. Will reliving my college days ever be a high priority? Do I even want to know what I wrote home about back then?

No matter what happens at the end of this year, I will again have to face those stowed cartons. Even if our next move is less rushed than this last one, I doubt I will want to carve out several days to read dusty old letters. Meanwhile, I know what my husband will be saying. “How many times are you going to move those boxes?” The “you” wasn’t lost on me. It’s always been “we” in the past, which was generous considering he is probably the only one who has moved them to date. Will those dusty boxes ever be a priority? And if they are, what will that say about the alternatives? I honestly don’t know.

Read Part 10 of The Urban Experiment!