By Liz, still too cold in the northeast
It’s April and (supposedly) spring although the weather hasn’t warmed up much in Boston yet.
Still, I’m ready for the warm weather and I’ve been getting that itch to clean stuff out. Which made me think about the whole concept of spring cleaning and all the potential opportunities for mayhem…because that’s what I do.
So Wickeds, I want to know – have you ever found something questionable during a cleaning spree? An old trunk in the attic with mysterious contents? Old letters that raised some questions? A creepy doll? A family secret? Tell me below!
Edith/Maddie: Ooh, I love this question, Liz. Hmm. It might not have been from spring cleaning, but I recently found that I still had my Japanese hanko. It’s a little round stamp with a person’s name in characters that people use (or used to use) as an official signature. One of the classes of businessmen I taught in Tokyo in 1977 had the stamp made for me before I left teaching them to come home – they had transliterated Maxwell into characters. I’m in Japan now and am looking around to see if hankos are still in use.
Barb: While cleaning out my mother-in-law’s stuff after she died I found a cache of letters. They were from a friend who had been assigned as her big sister, a system Northeastern University had for welcoming incoming female freshman. Constantly taunted by her male engineering classmates in those post-WWII years, my mother-in-law transferred to all-girls Emmanuel College after her freshman year but the women remained friends. I found the letter writer’s obituary online but she had a daughter. The daughter, weirdly, is a children’s book author and I managed to obtain her contact information. I emailed to ask if she wanted the letters. I warned her that her mother had very mixed feelings about marrying–not about the man, but about the choice to marry at all and the timing. She wrote back right away and I sent off the letters. She thanked me via email and said she loved having them. It was so gratifying.
Jessie: Once when I was a child my mother sent me to the back of our creepy attic for a rummage round for the Easter basket grass that she saved from year to year. When I lifted the bag it was in, it felt oddly heavy so I stuck my hand inside. Terrifyingly, I withdrew a set of false teeth! When I showed my mum she said ” I wondered what I had done with those.” Apparently, they belonged to her father. I still can’t look at Easter grass without feeling a shiver run up my spine!
Sherry: Oh, my, Jessie! But I’m glad you shared that memory because I couldn’t think of anything until I read yours! After my grandparents died we took a bunch of stuff from their house to ours. I remember sitting in the basement going through things and opening a black case. It was full of glass eyeballs that my grandfather had used! I think some shrieking was involved in that experience.
Julie: Jessie, I love that story. And the fact that the Easter grass was saved from year to year. And Sherry, eyeballs!
Readers, what oddities have you found during spring cleaning? Tell us in the comments!
I haven’t ever found anything to rival false teeth and glass eyeballs. I consider it a win if I find a twenty in the pocket of a coat I haven’t worn since last spring.
Having inherited the hand- me-downs from my grandparents, parents and an uncle, I’ve seen quite a bit of odd things that others found necessary to keep. Off hand, two sets of false teeth come to mind. Even stranger is when placed in a garage sale (I’ve often been teased that I could sell anything and this was a challenge), a woman bought both pair actually place one set in her mouth and saying “This fit pretty good!”.
The item the most fascinating to me was finding a obituary on my great grandmother. Found it as we were moving here to our forever home and needed to greatly downsize. Evidently my great grandmother lived in the same area that we were moving too. The time span of her life was the same as the man that homesteaded out property and is buried about a mile away. Makes one wonder if the owner of this property and my great grandparents might have known one another. I told hubby that we were moving back to my roots and didn’t even know it.
2clowns at arkansas dot net
Sherry wins! 🤣
Ha! That’s one win I could have done without!
We found a $20 bill in my brother in law’s raincoat pocket after he died, and we were going through his things to dispose of what was not keepable. My parents saved everything. I found insurance papers, cars they bought, and so on. I mean everything. But since they aren’t here, I can now see more about their lives. I love it.
Sherry absolutely wins! The most exciting thing I’ve found is dust. aprilbluetx at yahoo dot com