anyway, with some the scammers grabbing mail out of mailboxes (home and even the USPS boxes), it's probably better to not rely on the mailman to take the mail out of your mailbox.

I agree, we don’t put sensitive stuff in there anymore. We drive it to the post office.  These were just letters to the grandchildren. 

I shouldn’t start threads when I’m really hungry.

My wife and I have two small plastic containers with the letters we wrote each other when she was back in Florida and I was in Illinois.  We sat down one night to read through some and didn't get far.

I have a plastic box containing all the letters my grandfather wrote to my grandmother from France during WWI.  This was the same set of grandparents that got married in 1916. 

When my mother passed away we cleaned out her house and it was amazing what she kept.  Old calendars from 20 years ago, phone books, teaching materials from when she was a special ed teacher many years ago, all kinds of other stuff.  Like an encyclopedia set from the 1970s.  Small jars of something that went solid.  Things full of memories, I'm sure.  Kind of sad.

That made me much more picky when we made our last move.  What to save, what to donate, what to trash.  We had our regular house, a vacation house (we got the vacation house fully furnished!), and a storage unit all to be compressed into one smaller house.  We set a limit of one moving truck for all our stuff including furniture.  Everything else OUT.  A couple of trucks of donations, a couple dumpsters of "who would want this?"  Actually felt pretty good to get rid of all that stuff.  Even after the move I'm ruthless in discarding old "treasures".  Like that chunk of wire that might be useful some day.  That hammer with a chipped handle.  A box of rocks that are kind of pretty.  Still slowly thinning the bins I couldn't decide on before the move.

“Chunk of wire”… I’ve got all types of wires and cables and computer components from back when I built my own computers that I will never use. It’s cheaper now to just buy a computer and they get outdated so fast anyway, it’s not worth the time and trouble to build your own.  Besides my current office is too tiny, nowhere to work anyway.  But I’m having a hard time tossing that big reel of cat 5, old monitors, cases, spare wifi, power cords, adapters, etc etc etc.  “Some day I might need this!”  Yeah right.

Go through all your stuff.  With a fine tooth comb, every drawer, every last corner of your closets, pretending you are your own children and grandchildren and you are dead.

One thing we found: A letter written in 1916 to my grandmother shortly after she married my grandfather. It was from a guy she had apparently friend zoned. He opened by expressing shock to have been informed of her marriage, then wished her all the happiness in the world. Then, he went on for several sentences about how hurt he was that she didn’t choose him, that she didn’t care anything for him while he basically worshipped her.  But still, he is thrilled she found the man of her dreams (my grandfather) and hoped to become good friends with him!  Ended with repeated wishes for all the happiness she “so justly” deserves, even though “she and fate conspired” against them being together; nevertheless he will always love her.

Imagine shortly after your wedding getting a letter like that from a guy you thought was “just a friend”.  Creepy!  And then you keep the letter!  And your son finds it after you die and he keeps it!  And then a century later your grandchildren, whom you never met, end up with it.  (She died young.)

Or imagine you’re the guy and you write that highly personal letter in a frenzy of conflicting emotion, and a century later a bunch of strangers are reading it.  But there’s one thing I got from it: Young guys then were no different than young guys today; getting a crush on some female who thinks of him like a “brother” but being too shy to do anything about it, then getting their heart broken when she gets serious with somebody else.

That’s just one of many interesting things we found. And we barely scratched the surface of all the crap in mom’s house.

And a lot of the snowflakes think the “right wing” stuff is allowed

A moderate Democrat, a left leaning centrist, or what was a liberal just a few years ago, are all now “far right”.

The WSJ editorial board noted that Trump discussed abortion at the New Jersey rally:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-wildwood-days-2024-presidential-election-77942db7?st=9emjh2kfnn7pyka&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

But the Democrats are lying about this, saying Trump is for banning all abortion, it is a total lie, Trump NEVER said that.