LoriFLA: There's still time! Rebuy the book to spite your sister and paint the one on the cover!because I like it Do it! You can!

I love this story. Love love love.

I usually don't have this problem SINCE I NEVER THROW ANYTHING AWAY.
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Though I sometimes long for the Kaypro II computer I got rid of sometime in the mid-90s.

Well, my mom threw away some work shorts of my dad's once because they were all ratty and torn (and this is decades before his dementia). She didn't know that his expensive wristwatch was in them, though ....

My parents divorced when I was 12 or 13. The family had a massive record collection, probably 700+ records, and along with everything else except custody of me they went to my mom. I managed to sneak out maybe my 20 favourites before the stuff got moved.

I always felt like they were MY records, at least in an moral sense... that was the soundtrack I grew up to. And there were some really good bits in there - original release of Trout Mask Replica, all the first Apple release Beatle albums, etc. etc.

After eight or so moves, my mom finally reported to me that the record collection was now a part of the Campbell River landfill, and I don't think I'll ever really forgive her for that.

Things were a bit chaotic when I was leaving my first wife. She was understandably emotionally distraught, I was moving away to Kyrgyzstan and never coming back, and all the shit we'd been collecting to make a comfortable life in Myslenice now needed to be liquidated.

I had a beautiful collection of scale models, I had started really getting into it and was quite good at it. I had tonnes of obscure Polish books about WWII, and the camps, art, history.

There was no way in the three days I was back there to get it all boxed up. I had to ask her to please, box it and send it back to Canada. She never got to step two, and all that past history is sitting in a locked room, our old bedroom, in a little farmhouse that is now unused.

The good news is that we are still on good terms, she made sure it was all still intact, and next week I am driving up there, in a rental car, and collecting my shit and bringing it back with me to Sofia.

My grandmother was a world traveler. From every country she would visit, she would bring me a doll as a souvenir. She would always go out of her way to find high quality dolls, and some of them were exquisite. My two favorites were my Japanese doll and my Croatian doll, but I had dozens of these dolls: Moroccan, Chinese, Egyptian, Italian, Russian, you name it, my granny traveled all over Asia, Western Europe and North Africa. I loved my dolls, they were my prized treasures.
One day, after I had left for college, and my dolls were boxed carefully, awaiting the day that I would move somewhere permanently, my insane mother got a bug up her ass to 'clean house', and THREW MY DOLLS AWAY. She begs innocence, despite the fact that the box was not even cardboard, but rather wood, and had tape all over it marked, "CAREFUL, ALI'S DOLLS".
Bitch.
I never told my grandmother (my mother's mother) what her awful daughter had done. She went to her grave thinking that I still had my cherished dolls. I miss my nonna and my dolls. I also don't get along with my mother, and I would be lying if I said that it had nothing to do with the dolls.

Seriously, what is it about mothers and throwing things away?

Shoebox of baseball cards. Every American male's regret.

my mom "threw the puppies away"...that is, one day we came home and they were gone to Animal Friends, and that was that.

I would thereafter have to listen to her bragging about it to her friends at parties.

Such utter thoughtlessness is one reason I don't have kids.

About two years ago I heard from my sister that she'd found a kitten in the garage. She gave it a bath and my brother put pictures on Flickr. Then I heard my father had decided to throw it away. He drove it to the next city and dumped it. Sigh.

I had a box of childhood memorabilia stored in the attic of my mom and stepdad's big rented house. When I moved into my own house (not an apartment) and had the room to collect ALL of my things, this box was missing. It contained: a red leather clutch purse, which had the Aztec calender carved in the front (got it from a yard sale for .50 cents); two or three huge souveiner (sorry for the spelling) books from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus featuring Gunther Gebel Williams on the covers; various other small knickknacks and memories. It still bothers me. This is why I have several boxes in storage of my sons' things from childhood (they're still in childhood, for the most part). I hate throwing things away. As soon as I do, I'll find a use for whatever it was.

Once I sold an old, beautiful, American made chair at a garage sale. It had a cane seat and a graceful curved back and was in great shape. My sister didn't want it and I didn't have the common sense to pull it aside before some antique dealers pounced on it. The pangs of regret are heavy.

Thanks for sharing these stories. I can feel your pain. ;-)

msali, I can somewhat relate to your story because I sold my Madame Alexander dolls that my grandmother bought me over the years. Sometimes I wish I hadn't. I wasn't overly sentimental about mine but yours sound like a true treasure. I'm sorry that happened.

DarkForest, I will probably never get around to painting a floor cloth. It was one of my many crazy ideas. I bought it on a whim. I do wish I would have sold that book or traded it in, or donated it. Sometimes when I'm in the thick of a chaotic cleanup, recycling is the last thing on my mind. I love your Mysterious Things cup. I have a mysterious things drawer.

All the opportunities to play a larger role in my son's life while he was in his mother's custody.

I have more regrets about things that have gotten lost over the years (the perfect pair of brick red jeans, the other crystal earring) than the things that I've gotten rid of on purpose.
That's probably because I keep and use things til they are truly worn out. In high school, I rescued my favorite holey jeans from my mom's trashcan no less than 3 times.

I just took a bunch of things to the consignment store, including a dress I wore to a wedding a few weeks ago. Then I got a bunch of compliments on how I looked in the wedding photos and now I'm thinking maybe I should have kept that dress. But I try to keep reminding myself that I have tons of other dresses and that I can buy a new one that will probably look just as good if I really need one.

This may sound a little weird (well, consider the source), but shortly after my son was born, I lost all my sentimental attachment to mass-produced consumer goods. Collectibles particularly, especially after ebay came along and prices for first editions and such plummeted. I realized that I no longer had to haul my collection of Guitar Players and other magazines around, because at any time, I could pick up an entire year's lot for less than the cost of the original subscription and that included shipping. Even that old Radio Shack synthesizer (actually manufactured by Moog) that I owned in 1982 still comes up every few months for less than I originally paid.

To me, now, it's just stuff. The exceptions are those one-of-a-kind hand-made items like a custom musical instrument or an original piece of art, possibly even something like an old couch that has been reupholstered to my specifications.

Much more important to me are the friends I have made over the years and the experiences that we shared.

/end off-topic rant

My mother gave my blankie to the dog. I have never forgiven her.

Her.

re: dolls
My grandmother had, from her own childhood, an entire trunk (think steamer trunk) full of dolls. Beautiful dolls, as my mother remembers, with full sets of clothes and beds and whatnot.

Sometime when my mother was small (this would have been during or just prior to WWII) my grandmother was forced to leave the trunk of dolls behind in one of their many moves. My mother thinks she might have actually traded it away for some necessity, but her recollection is hazy, at best.

To her dying day, my grandmother regretted the loss of those dolls.

I had a single older brother and a passion for collecting. When he got into Star Wars, I naturally collected every last card and sticker in the late 70s / early 80s from the Star Wars trading card set. Yes, every card... every card.

Sometime around 1985 my mother got mad at my room being messy and threw out everything... everything, including every last card.

These days that complete set would have bought me my first house, or paid a substantial part of my college loans.

Yeah, I have issues with my mother for lots of episodes like this.

If peoples' mothers didn't throw out all their collectible stuff then there wouldn't be a subsequent shortage of it and it wouldn't be worth anything.

Yup, my grandma threw away my dad's entire runs of the Tales From the Crypt and Vault of Fear comic books (probably a bunch of other EC classics, too) while he was away at college. She found them shocking. I think they may have spiked in price when the HBO TV show premiered in the '80's, but they're probably still pretty valuable. Especially because he kept his stuff in good condition.

I lost a favorite sweater to the laundry once, but I'm not very sentimental about my belongings, except for one: I would commit murder to protect my great-grandfather's violin.

Hugh, my husband has those very same Tales From the Crypt and Vault of Fear comics that he collected as a kid and received from his father.

I think he'd divorce me if I ever did anything to them. Considering I grew up on comic books, our marriage is safe in that regards... but yeah, I can see that important. If your dad still enjoys them, they just reissued all the comics in quite lovely bound books.

My mom did it, too. My son & I went through the kids books together. He got to save ones that he wanted, I did too. The rest went to the Library, and they were delighted. We keep a Memory Box of stuff that is significant for some reason.

I got rid of lots of stuff when I moved last year, some of it would be useful now, but I keep saying to myself "It's just stuff." I'm happy that I have some sentimental items from my childhood, and am trying to dispose of the bitter memories.