In response to my mom’s question below, my dad writes: 

I was struck by “Does this mean that they are actually trash in spite of being cool or unusual or nostalgic?” My usual repartee to such observations is something like “No, it means that the former owner was a human, and you can view that as a suggestion for what sort of customer might be drawn to such a thing.”

The disconnect between showing wear and needing some attention, and actually being trash may be a good diagnostic indicator of class. I used to find lovely sterling jewelry in the Saratoga Springs dump - not broken or scratched, just dated.

Another disconnect that always gave me a chuckle is the line, used by the dawn flea market attic removal guys ‘That just came out of a house.’ They meant to convey that it’s not just the sort of crap that has gone through eight flea markets but is real and virgin. But I would always hear it as ‘this was used by humans’.

On another tack, I just started but then misplaced Marcel Pagnol’s biography (learning from Alice Water’s intro that Chez Panisse was named after a character in the Marius trilogy) and was struck by his description of his dad’s hoarding/collecting, a quite recognizable and very sympathetic description (down to he details - I strongly approved of his bringing home an aircraft altimeter that was stuck at 4000 meters because of its intrinsic value - I even glanced fondly at my own perfectly functional aircraft altimeter on the bookcase).  If I find Pagnol, which is a delightful book in many ways but may be languishing unreachably on the MBTA or elsewhere, I’ll send it along. 

Thank you for the message, dad. 

My dad writes: 

That was a harsh judgement - I simply realized that my initial appreciation of massive amounts of bubble wrap was ill-advised, and the reasons for saving it are nil.  Don’t worry - that doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned all intentions of cutting back.   I always have or can readily get packing material when or if I ship something. But so far none of the things I have got rid of (instruments, furniture, motorcycles) involved shipping  (which is itself something of a drag). Mostly they involved conceiving the space here differently, which prompted the decisions to drop stuff. And I’m happy to ship with crumpled newsprint, antiquarian-style. Having packing material, it turns out, was a symptom (‘it may be useful’), and tossing the packing is not an ominous development.

Glad to hear it! 

My dad just wrote, in response to StrayMessages photo of bubble wrap: 

I appreciated StrayMessages comment ‘Yes I have space for an inordinate amount of bubble wrap’. That gave me a partial key for weighing and assigning a score or value to stuff. While StrayMessages showed a paltry amount of bubble wrap (sorry, SM) I realized that in five years I haven’t once used any, and the only objects ever escape from here are given as gifts, posted as freecycle, or simply arrayed like ornaments on top of the curbside trash for a brief minute of independence. It’s safe to conclude I will never use any bubble wrap, so it’s future utility is zero. The formula then says it should all go - why hasn’t it?  Next step - how? Will the town take four large cardboard boxes filled with PVC plastic or must the components be separated and bundled? Must I make ribbons of bubble wrap for the bundling or can it be bundled with twine like a roast? Perhaps I’ll start by throwing out the styrofoam peanuts in a plastic bags under the recycle bin. 

This is a vicious circle, dad. If I’m not mistaken you’re saving the bubble wrap so you can start selling off some of the musical instruments on eBay, as you’ve been saying you’ll do for at least a decade…