What's it worth?

One of the saddest things I ever saw happened one Saturday morning in the affluent section of the next town over. It was a beautiful colonial home in federal blue.  Overshadowing the home, in the driveway stood a large gray dumpster. Strewn across the tidy lawn lay treasures of a lifetime, books, artwork, crystal, silverware, linens, and lace, grouped in piles. A young woman crouched over some older kitchen gadgets. It was obvious things had been picked over pretty well and even though it was clear that these were items of quality they had been passed over. She told me it was the second weekend of an estate sale. Her parents had passed away.

I smiled at the young woman remarking, "so many beautiful things!" She looked rather wistfully over the lawn and told us we could take what we wanted. It was all heading for the dumpster in an hour or so. She and her husband had been tasked to clean out the family home and the contents that remained were deemed useless and set to be discarded. 

I wondered how history would find some of these items, hundreds of years from now, dug from our dumps. How would future archeologists assess the value of the things we once held so dear? 

Value is a funny thing. It is completely relative and dependent on many factors. I have seen treasures sold for pennies and trash trade for a king's ransom and it was all about value. A tiny toy car that is supposed to sell for an American dollar sparks interest over some random detail, rare paint job, a mistake in the printing of the card, weird tires, anything at all, and enthusiasts will pay crazy money for the dollar car. It happens every day. If you collect anything, you know. How does one determine the value of a life's accumulations? 

I watched a show tonight about the tiny house movement. A family abandoning the old large house, suitable for multigenerational family situations, for simple, practical, minimalist lives, paring their worlds down to a fraction of what they had been; 2,000 square feet down to 500. Whew, that would be a shocker to me.

Several years ago now, my sister and I found ourselves doing that same thing with our family home, dumpster in the driveway. It was our turn to assign value. We are children of people born during the great depression. Every little thing had great value for our parents. I know it echoed in my head, the sound of our mother's voice cooing over this vase, or that glass, a table, a fine chair, iconic for its design. Every little thing that we grew up with seemed to have a story to swell its worth and make us care for it. So many beautiful things! When it came time to decide what items got adopted and what went for sale or the dumpster I know the process was difficult for both of us. Even now these many of these items take space in my home as venerable survivors of days gone by. They are more beautiful than useful but they remain like remnants of a ghost. I do see the value in passing on some things from the previous generation. There is gentle grace in sipping from Great Grandmothers' teacup or mixing the holiday cookie batter in the bowl your mother mixed hers in or checking the time on Granddad's pocket watch. I have seen these things as connections to our past but I don't know if the teacup, mixing bowl, or pocket watch will survive this next generation.

I am aware of the benefits of minimalist living, some of them anyway. But I also see what is lost and I have to accept that if that is the way people are going then maybe it is time for some of these things to be lost. I know I won't be willingly joining the tiny house movement any time soon. I do like my things and my treasures. I'll be holding on to some of those things when the tiny house people get that nostalgic twinge and go running out to find that one thing they miss in their tiny space. I suppose that would help to assign value to stuff. It's all cyclical and relative, this value thing. What's it worth, you ask? Whatever you're willing to pay and that, pretty much, goes for everything.