The little things of life

This morning we did an E-waste divestiture which included 5 printers, four monitors, a ton of cables and other odd stuff including some old time things like Paperport which was an early electronic fax machine.  I am sure that some of the printers were still functional but because of advances in technology they were simply no longer useful.  Technology continues to advance and every once in a while we need to clean out.   I did keep my Osborne computer which was the first computer I owned.

One of the reasons we got into this mode was because when we had the video security installed the installer (who rated a C- at best for his proficiency) asked if we had a VGA monitor - turns out we have three that work - but he could not figure out how to deal with them.  I began to rummage around and found all this forgotten techno junk and decided to pitch it.   We found a recycler who would pick it up for free and we were off to the races.

But there is a second part to the story.  As I was cleaning out the room we use downstairs for storage I also found an envelope that I evidently brought home from when we cleaned out my aunt's house.  It included all the personal stuff that my aunts had kept that came from either me or my kids.  There was a copy of my son's birth announcement (now 29) and a couple of thank you notes from my daughter to the aunts for a gift or two (one very juvenile and one written when she was probably in college).  There were pictures of the kids as they grew up.  In short a series of "snapshots (photos and archival material) of our family that my aunts had chosen to keep.

When we cleaned out my aunts' house we threw out a lot of junk - but the stuff that mattered (seemingly most to them) was the four sets (I have three siblings) of stuff that by itself was not very important but when collected showed a connection to these to family members who my kids knew only slightly.