Downsizing

My mom is downsizing to move to one of those 55+ complexes, going from a 3/2 1800 sq ft to a one bedroom about 600 sq feet. Almost 50 years' worth of stuff to go through and donate, sell, or trash. It's a big job as many know.

Anyway, my mom is the type that likes to get "the best" actual brands of stuff, so for example she has several Le Creuset pots, and I mean like 10 or so. Not knock offs. Cindy and I, for example, have just two, and they're knock-offs: One by Lodge, one by Rachel Ray (ha).

She has a lot of such high-end kitchen stuff, and she doesn't need it or have the room at the new place.

Now this is now yet another reason for me to be all boo-hoo about Adri no longer being here, because she would have been ALL OVER this process. She loved to organize, she'd have been such a big help, and more importantly she could have had her pick of all this stuff, and I so wish she would have had that opportunity.

She loved kitchen stuff, but finances never allowed her to have any good stuff. For her 25th birthday we got her a nice set of pots and pans: not a high-end set by All-Clad or anything, but maybe about $200 set that was much better than the odds and ends she'd assembled from the dollar store or garage sales.

She was so happy to get them, she beamed as she said to me, "Wow, I feel like an adult now with proper cookware!"

My mom has several (and I mean several; did I mention that she's also fickle towards stuff like this?) dish settings. Adri could have replaced her 6 or so plates and bowls with stuff that matched, and could have had eight settings to boot.

Instead of her $10 hand-held mixer she could have had my mom's KitchenAid stand mixer, and the good one, nicer than the one I got Cindy years ago.

She could have replaced the Target special clearance microwave that doesn't even have enough space for a dinner plate with my mom's top of the line Sharp.

Instead of having to jerry-rig the washer or dryer ever couple of years, she could have had my mom's newish washer and dryer with stands.

A high-end coffee grinder. Stainless steel set of measuring cups and matching measuring spoons. Not one but two different sized Instapots. A milk frother. Cookie sheets not made of cheap aluminum. A dehydrator. Yoghurt maker. Not one not two but three types of air fryers including a stainless-steel Cuisinart. About 20 different types of tea pots. Food canisters, matching mugs.

And then there's all the office supplies, another thing that both my mom and daughter loved. Staplers and filing cabinets and three-hole punches and laminators and binders and pens, markers, paper clips, enough highlighters to highlight a thousand copies of "War and Peace." Sheet protectors. Paper cutter. Several dozen of those Japanese character erasers. Calculators. On and on.

When I'm over there helping my mom go through this stuff it just breaks me that I'm not doing it with Adri. She'd have been so excited, both to help and to find so many treasures from her nonna.

And I know that it might seem to some that I go looking for new and different ways to be saddened by Adrianna's passing, but I assure you that this is not the case, they just occur. I really do try to not make everything about her.

But, at the end of the day, so much was about her.