Dysfunction Junkies
Two high school besties reconnect and commiserate their stories as they navigate the dysfunctions of life from marriage, families, illness, death of childhood families, and creating healthy boundaries. Join them each week as Chrisy and Kerry share their stories and life lessons all with a zest of wit, humor, and love. They may not have seen it all, but they have seen enough!
Dysfunction Junkies
We Confront Inherited Clutter, Purging Guilt, And The Strange Rituals Around Death
Ever open a dusty box and feel the wave of guilt wash over you before you even see what’s inside? We’re knee-deep in a household purge and a family inheritance tangle—moving cross-country while sorting funeral guestbooks, memorial cards, crocheted doilies, baptism outfits, and a stack of mystery paperwork that somehow still has Social Security numbers on it. The question running through the whole episode: what do we owe the dead, and what do we keep for the living?
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Welcome to the Dysfunction Junkies Podcast. We may not have seen it all, but we've seen enough. And now, here are your hosts. Chrissy and Carrie.
SPEAKER_01:Hello, Junkies. I'm Carrie. And I'm Chrissy.
SPEAKER_04:And we've got a topic today. Yes, I was gonna say I'm Chrissy, and yes, I have useless shit.
SPEAKER_01:I think we all sometimes have useless shit, and we inherit it, we hoard it, we purchase it ourselves, we obtain it in whatever way, and then we have to find ways to get rid of it. Or justify why we have it. Yeah, that's true too.
SPEAKER_02:I do that a lot.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you do. I'm justifying a lot. Amen. And and Nick's trying to figure out how to get rid of it. Right.
SPEAKER_00:So roll off, everyone. It's a roll off.
SPEAKER_04:He's very excited at the notion of a roll off. I just worry everybody in the neighborhood's gonna think we're moving.
SPEAKER_00:Ah, that's even a more reason to do it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Because they love to see what everybody else is doing and they like to wonder why are they getting divorced? And they want to look at your shit. Well, here I know what they love is if someone does, because they're still building homes here. Right.
SPEAKER_00:So they want to they want to use it. They love when someone builds a home because then they can throw away their shit.
SPEAKER_04:They use the on the new construction site. Yeah, there's a reason to like, you know.
SPEAKER_00:They go under the the dark of the night and then they throw out their shit.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's always in the construction site. The dump. Oh, that's funny.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So Chrissy and I are dealing with uh kind of getting rid of stuff in our own different ways. In my situation, as I mentioned, we're gonna be moving. So I am really going through the purge. And I we've mentioned this in season one in some of our episodes. The death purge, we call it, but it's also just you know, you're just clearing everything out. You know, it's it's time to why am I keeping this? Chrissy's been inheriting some things with uh different changes going on in her family dynamics with her mom and everything. So this was gonna be a good topic for today.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:Chrissy, go.
SPEAKER_04:Well, just trying to help organize my mom a little bit, go through some things that she had uh packed up, doing pretty well, getting rid of just things that so don't need anymore. But in opening up some boxes of hers, and just like you know these things were out there and you thought they were cool when you were younger. Yeah. But now when you're in your 50s, uh you almost open it up and it's horrific. It's like you're terrified at what uh uh awaits you in this uh box. My husband came to me and he was sort of trying to do a quick glance so we could help get rid of some of the boxes and stuff, and he said, Oh, there's some book out there, and what did you say? You said it was something else.
SPEAKER_00:Well, just you know, those books when you go to to calling hours for people, you sign the book because you went to the calling hours.
SPEAKER_01:Like a registry.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Why did we do that, first of all? I don't it's I think it's supposed to be so you know who to send thank you cards to, but who sends thank you cards anymore? Right.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I don't know. Were we ever supposed to send that one? Thanks. So I think I affectionately referred to it as the death book.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Well, I knew right away, and I'm like, oh my gosh, those resurfaced. I didn't want them because of what they are, and then it's that whole thing where it doesn't have bad mojo on it. Because it was in a funeral home. It was in a funeral home.
SPEAKER_01:It represents a death, and it's like did it stop at the grocery store or the gas station on the way home from the funeral home to release the spirits.
SPEAKER_04:I don't know where it was originally. Who touched it? And pretty much everybody whose names are in there, they're dead now, too. Because I'm looking at this list. It's in my garage right now, and I'm like, oh my god, this is nothing but death and mayhem. Oh my gosh, you know, because well, one of them in there is a great-grandparent. Oh my gosh. And I was like, oh my god, this is really bad. So what do I I can't throw this away?
SPEAKER_01:I was just gonna say, and there lies the conundrum.
SPEAKER_04:What do you do with the death book? Sometimes I wonder if I should go to a cemetery near the dead loved one's grave and maybe I could just bury it, maybe just like two feet next to them. So they have their book. They have their book to remove it. Because somebody should have threw that shit in with them before they closed it up. Just don't ask me to dig the hole. This could be a new career for somebody.
SPEAKER_01:Help people get rid of their death crap. Okay, I think I know what I think I know how to solve this conundrum. Have you seen where on gravestones now you can have the QR code and you set up with this company this QR code and you can put like memories about that person or their obituary or photos. So if somebody's going to the semi Chrissy's look on her face right.
SPEAKER_00:I can't believe it. You got freaking QR code on a tombstone.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So you put I really see, I think this is ingenious. So when you go to take a picture of this look, I can't, I am horrified at this. We're gonna videotape this because Chrissy's face right now is hysterical. Okay, so you go to the cemetery and you put this little QR code on the tombstone. And so when people go there to visit, they can pull that up and they can see pictures and learn about that person and you maybe read their obituary or read tributes or look. And how they died horrifically in some horrible tragedy. But what you can do is you can scan in the death book so you know who that's what you do. You ski you digitize it.
SPEAKER_04:The Library of Congress for God's sakes. What? What who who the I told you the funeral business is in trouble and they are on their way out. A lot of people don't want to be flipping smacked with that thing, even though they're dead. How many times to put that poison in their bodies? Oh, dead bodies, the embalming stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, I mean, uh a lot of people are doing this natural burial thing. They're doing uh, what's that called? Composting. With themselves, I guess.
SPEAKER_04:Or they're getting cremated. Well okay. So now they got the whole like tech part of it. Yeah. Let's put now the loved one, if they're going to their loved one's grave, they probably have this crap in a box like I did somewhere. Well, that's what I mean. So you digitize it and then you save it to that, and then you can throw it away, but it's okay because it's saved. Here's the deal maybe the semin the funeral, whoever's doing this, don't even let this become a a hardcover book, three-dimensional item. Let it just stay as a tech and have it on a disc and upload it on that gravestone. There you go.
unknown:Come on.
SPEAKER_04:I really, this is insane. And why aren't they? If they want to do the new ideas, I gave them the new idea about if they really stand behind their product of you know, embalming people, let's dig this people up, see how good their work is. Don't they want to say, look at how good we did? They still look like them. I want to know.
SPEAKER_00:Why is this so dark? I guess it's very dark. It's like, you know, XYZ funeral home. We've been preserving people since 1925. And I want to see it.
SPEAKER_04:Why is that why? Why is that dark? What why are we burying everybody so far down? Well, what's how did that? I would love to know. There's there's gotta be some weird ritual, some some biblical reason six feet was chosen. Well, I think that it's gotta do with the frost line.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's because back in the day before they had embalming fluid, if an animal's gonna come dig them up, they needed to be so far under so before they lose interest. Yeah, or they don't smell them as much or whatever. So you had to go deep so that way the animals didn't, you know, dig up dig up Fred. Oh here you go. Did you Gemini it? Gemini it!
SPEAKER_00:So to prevent the spread of disease, deter grave robbers, and keep animals from disturbing the body. That's why it went down six feet.
SPEAKER_01:Deter grave robbers. I thought you said this. Why?
SPEAKER_04:Because they get tired after five feet? They did a study. How long before you get tired of trying to dig up this dead body? So we know we can dig him, we can bury him a little longer.
SPEAKER_00:So disease control during the London plague of 1665. A deep burial of corpses was mandated to pretend prevent the potential spread of disease. Grave robbery prevention, six feet of earth made it difficult for grave robberies.
SPEAKER_02:It's kind of like the owl with the lollipop licks. One, two, three. Digging. Now I'm really aggressed now.
SPEAKER_00:Dig burying a body at this depth thought to prevent animals from smelling and digging. Yeah, see. Jesus God.
SPEAKER_04:Mary and Joseph. Well, here's the other thing. I did recently learn from one of them quick little snippets on social media about a term we still use. Sometimes you wonder where these are. Yes, terms come from. So this one was back a long time ago, 150 or so years ago, Victorian period, probably, or maybe even before that. People were getting buried alive. Yes. Oh, I know where you're going with this one. Yeah. Yes. I'm sure you probably did. Yes. And so they used to have like these bells or whatever on people's graves, and they had people basically hanging out in the cemetery to listen for these bells. Yes. And that was called the graveyard shift. Uh-huh. So that's where that term came from. Yep. That was the shift they were.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, because they had to listen to see who was buried alive, whose little bell was ringing.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. See, oh, this is not dead jet. I go for a walk now. Fine. But so we got QR codes. I can never get those to work when I'm in a retail environment. And now I gotta try and make that. Interest is gonna leave me quickly if it's not about a purchase. But I mean purchase this dead body. Well, I mean, if I can click on this, how many times will you promise to dig them up? So I can see what's going on. Well, historically, is this not valuable to see maybe a few a generation now to see what we were burying people in? What the hell outfit? I can't remember what we try. Why'd we choose that outfit? Yeah. I know. You don't know what to say.
SPEAKER_03:I just don't understand why this is so offensive.
SPEAKER_01:It's not offensive. I think it's hysterical. Okay, but here's the other thing is did you ever think about like when they're burying people? Like, do they okay? So yeah, here's their outfit, but why are you putting underwear on them? Does it matter? Do you have to give the underwear? When you when you send your loved ones that's passed away and you send them, here's their clothes, did you do you send them underwear? I don't know. I don't want to know. If by God, if I was gonna be buried, all I have to say is, do not bury me in a bra. Oh my god. These things are miserable enough, but we're not, we're being cremated, so you don't have to worry.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, okay. I did wonder if maybe the one historical society would have any value for these things, but I guess not, because we're not like the Rockefellers or anything of our area. So it's like, well, we don't give a sh crap who were or who came to the funeral. Why do we care?
SPEAKER_01:You know what happens a lot working at a church when people pass away and families inherit this useless shit. We get a lot of stuff. We'll come in in the morning and there'll be a box of something by the door. It's like, what the heck? And it'll be something that, you know, oh, the church had their whatever bicentennial, whatever, and they had a mug, and the people had the mug from that that church, you know, and so they the family doesn't know what to do. Well, we'll give it back to the church.
SPEAKER_04:So they like do a drop and run. Yes, and we'll find wait a minute.
SPEAKER_01:Now I think we're getting on to something. You could drop the death books off at the funeral home or the church.
SPEAKER_04:These are so old that like the one funeral home doesn't even exist anymore. Maybe two of them don't exist.
SPEAKER_00:I wonder if like a historical society or somebody would.
SPEAKER_04:Well, that's what I was saying. But I said because we're not Rockefellers or whoever the names are of the area, we're not like that type of people. Right. That they would have no interest in it. But I mean, the books I guess are interesting in the fact that the funeral home, you know, is no longer in existence. And I don't know. It's it's that's a so How'd we get right into the funeral thing? I had other stuff I was gonna touch.
SPEAKER_01:We have a whole thing of stuff. Well, so I was just because we're getting ready to move, I am really purging our house. I was going through this one chest, uh like a you know, foot end of the bed foot chest kind of a thing. Right. And it had some things of my mom's in there. And I was going through, and I don't know, I don't know how the it's probably when she moved in, we were just, you know, overloaded with all the stuff that moved into the house. So the this one box had like old taxes from years past. I'm like, why? How did this even get here? You know, so like that stuff's easy. Okay, shred that. You don't need their taxes from 1980 to your parents that have both since passed away and everything, whatever. Then what was in there was like different little crocheted little doilies. You know, you get all these from back in the day. And I don't even know, like, I don't know, I don't know if it was my parents or my mom, my grandmother, her friend, who knows, were all these little crocheted doilies. Like, what do you do with that nowadays? Like, that used to be a thing that people would, you know, put on their table, a crocheted doily. What do you do with those?
SPEAKER_04:Now that I think a historical society might be interested in taking because they do set up exhibits that are for certain time periods, and it could help with that. Yeah, I don't know. But do you that means you gotta call them, see if they'll take them, drop it off.
SPEAKER_01:I'm just putting everything in a box that I find, and then I'm gonna say to my sisters, hey, here you go. You decide. You guys decide, because I just unearthed this from a box that I didn't even know I had. And here we go. I don't want it. Now, I also found in this box was a box that was actually my mom had saved, and it was had my name on it, is mine, from when I was baptized at a month of age. The little knitted outfit that somebody made me when I was a month old for my baptism. Is it wrong for me to not want that and to throw it out? Yeah. Chris, you want it?
SPEAKER_04:No, but I have mine. What am I gonna do with it? And actually, my niece wore my baptism outfit because we were her godparents, and then my daughters both wore it because even though I'm not religious, I did baptize my three children.
SPEAKER_01:Not at the same church, but I don't I okay but if you don't want to get rid of it, but I feel like I feel like I'm wrong for getting rid of it.
SPEAKER_04:Because somebody made it? Yeah, well, who who made it? I have no idea. Oh. Somebody did. If you can find out who made it, well, they're probably dead.
SPEAKER_01:But they might have children to our code their gravesite to say, oh, this is so-and-so, and I crocheted carries baby bathrooms.
SPEAKER_04:Because actually, what was special was we did get his mother crocheted and had some beautiful pieces. And the one was a white little I don't know, like a jacket or like something you'd put over, and it was for a baby. We had the kids wear that when they got baptized too, because it was his mom had done it. But I'm saying if the whoever crocheted this for you, if you could figure out who it was, if they have children, you could maybe ask them if they want it because their parent made it.
SPEAKER_01:If it was somebody, it would have been a grandparent, so it would have been somebody up my line. So that's what I'm saying. And so, and then here's the thing like I don't want to be continuing this cycle of uh inheriting useless shit to my son and my grandchildren. You know what I'm saying? Right. So, I mean, they're not gonna want it. I mean, their their kids are past the age. I mean, you know, this is something I wore as a one-month-old infant. So my grandchildren are, you know, two and six, so they're they're not wearing it, so it's not like they could reuse it there. Are we really gonna save it for another 20 some years that maybe I would say that's probably a safe thing to donate to.
SPEAKER_04:Who's gonna want to donate? Am I just giving my shit to somebody? Goodwill is just taking stuff anyhow for the most part. The only thing they won't take is something I have in my garage I can't get rid of. And it's like flipping beds and crap like that.
SPEAKER_01:We need to we need to talk to somebody from Goodwill about this because I feel like you'll take it, just stick it in the box. But okay. They're not looking right when you drop it off. But but is it just going in the dumpster because they have no connection?
SPEAKER_04:But you didn't make that decision, they're gonna make it for you. I don't know. Here's what I wrote a note down real quick because I thought of this. This probably helps because when people pass, there's like this weird thing where you don't want to be disrespectful to the person who passed, and you're trying to hold on to whatever you can of them from their life.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:So there's like all these factors going into you being able to make a rational decision.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Try to get rid of stuff before they die.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, well, amen to that. I I mean, trust me, when when my mom was still alive and we moved her out of her house, we did go through a lot of this. So, like, try thank God, because a lot of it was. But now we're down to the nitty-gritty of things. Now we're getting into the the minutia of the final things that meant something to her or whatever, you know. And so, and and it really, even then, it's just a very small because most of this has all been taken care of. I'm just finding the stray random box that somehow got tucked somewhere, you know. But but it is things like I found I found in one of her paperworks like the original mortgage to their house, the Wilcox Road house. The original mortgage. Why why did they keep that for 50 years? Why?
SPEAKER_04:Like this when you paid off your mortgage.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe that was Yeah, I I remember the episode of All on the Family. Remember when our they had a party.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, really? Because they were gonna burn the mortgage because they paid their home off.
SPEAKER_01:But I'm thinking, like, why didn't it American dream? Yeah, but then they refinanced their house and like three more times had other mortgages on it. So why that doesn't that Nolan boy? But it's still like, but there's still a part of me that feels like do I like is it okay to shred that? Oh hell yeah. Yeah. Oh hell yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And I'm not and for me to sit here and tell me, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because I'm not the one who keeps things, but it's just at this point though. But I also don't want to and keep the cycle, and I also don't want to pay to ship it across country when we move. You know, we have to pay for every pound from Ohio to Utah.
SPEAKER_04:Well, you should have that be a big factor in what's helping you decide of getting rid of stuff. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And like I said, her stuff is we're just talking one or two things here. There's there's not a lot. But what I'm doing is I'm therefore then looking at my stuff, going, okay, what do I really need to keep and what do I not? You know, and when do you really need to, you know, certain paperwork, like I don't know. I don't want to be part of the problem. I'm gonna become part of the problem right now. You already are problem.
SPEAKER_04:Well, no, I got it. I got a good one. I'm gonna give other people a problem right now. Okay. Because this stakes with me whenever I go through old stuff. Yes, especially books. Yes. I, of course, watched a movie a long time ago. Uh-oh. Where uh I can tell you who's in it. Uh, you guys are gonna be like, who the hell are these people? You'll probably know Mary Tyler Moore. Okay. She was in it, and a gentleman named Robert Preston, who was the music man. Oh, okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:The movie version.
SPEAKER_04:And he was on Broadway with it too. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:He was on Broadway with it. I believe so, yes.
SPEAKER_04:Uh anyway, it was a movie, and Mary Tyler Moore and him were friends, but he was married, but his wife was like older than him, and she was sick, and she did pass away. So Mary Tyler Moore is his friend came over to try and help him purge. He lived in a big old house. And his wife, I think, was like into the arts, or maybe she was a literature teacher. So she had they had a library, tons of books. So they're trying to get rid of these books and go through them. Well, they accidentally opened up one of the books, money fell out. Oh yes. Well, then they decided that he all of a sudden realized he kind of knew his wife, and there was a method to her madness. Uh-huh. So they ended up finding, they kept opening up books and money would fall out. Yeah. And so now every time I come across a book, mine or especially somebody else's, I am flipping through that book to see if there is money. Yes. His name was Michael Finnegan. Are you looking up the movie? I think that was a thing. His name was Michael Finnegan, which was he used to say that saying. Because there used to be a saying about Michael Finnegan, begin again.
SPEAKER_01:That was, I think that is why many people of that generation uh did that, because my mom was the same way. So when we cleared out her house, we opened up every book to make sure. Plus, she was hiding money from my dad, the gambler, so she knows she had to she had to hide money. But but but no, we did. We had to go through everything. But I'm also finding you have to go through every piece of paper.
SPEAKER_00:It was it was called Finnegan Begin again.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Finnegan begin again.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, because I remembered his name was Michael Finnegan, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But as I'm going through like even my own paperwork, you know, things get sit on your desk and then you know, things get mixed up together. And so you think, oh, this is just taxes from 20 years ago. Oh, but oopsie, there's a copy of a birth certificate in there that apparently I had to pull out and you know, oh, so like you do gotta go through everything just just in case, but and money and sometimes checks, you know, you find and all of our old papers from a while ago had our social security numbers on them.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, they don't do that now, thank you. But all this old stuff, I mean, I feel like I just gotta set when you hear somebody's having a bonfire, you have wait a minute, you have capabilities of a pretty good bonfire at your place. Yes, we've I can't burn more than like 10 papers at a time here because then they call the cops on you. But at your place, you can really have a party.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, but you still gotta be careful because paper, like because we actually did just do a big bonfire uh a couple weeks ago, and we had all these papers in this bin, and they weren't important papers, they were just I don't know what they were. But anyways, we I said, Oh, we'll just put that in the burn pile. Well, they were on the bottom. Well, even though they were in the bottom of this flaming inferno, when you pack those papers together, they just don't just burn. Like they have to wait one page at a time. So literally, as it got to the bottom of the pile, you would see like one page flipped off and burn. And then you've it'd be careful, the wind blows are gonna fly away. So it's not as easy to just throw papers on a burn pile to burn them. Now, if you have a burn barrel, then you can, but it's still it's very time consuming. It's much quicker to just shred it, but you gotta have a good shredder. I know. So then what do you do? Then you gotta go to the UPS store and pay them for okay, here's 20 pounds of paper that I don't want to sit there and go zerm, zrn, zrm, two pages at a time. So you gotta pay. And then you're talking 50 bucks. They will shred it for you? Yeah, they'll you can take paper there to the UPS store and they'll shred it, but you pay by pounds.
SPEAKER_04:So there's companies that actually I had a call for the company I work for, where they will actually come. Yeah, but you still pay. Well, the company had me getting quotes for it. It wasn't my stuff, but because you have boxes of records when you have a company and they're old, and you're like, just to be safe, we just need to get rid of these. We don't need them anymore, but they may have information on them you don't want just anywhere. Right.
SPEAKER_01:And see, that's part of my problem right now. So then I'm thinking, wait, I know sometimes they have a community shred where they'll do you can take it like once a year. I need to find that because I am fine, I am earthing so much documentation and paperwork I need to try.
SPEAKER_00:The local uh grocery store hosts that once a year.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, really? Oh, all right. Well, I need to look that up because I got lots of paperwork.
SPEAKER_04:So that's where we're gonna leave that one. The other part of this that we're gonna touch on that I wanted to touch on real quick. Oh, those real quick. What? Not just then the crosses. I we got some ancient crosses I've unearthed and an old Bible. And and and because I'm not religious, I don't want it, right, but there is a decent part of me that says, even though I'm not religious, I feel really horrible if I were to throw a butt. I mean, I feel like I would just burst into flames immediately as soon as I put it in the garbage can.
SPEAKER_01:You probably would. I would. Because it's they could be blessed, and you can't throw that away.
SPEAKER_04:I didn't even think about that. Yeah. I just didn't want to throw it away because it was a Bible. Right. But it's worse than that. What do I do with this stuff?
SPEAKER_01:Leave it on a church doorstep in the middle of the night.
SPEAKER_04:Like a baby, in a basket. Like with like Moses going down the river. Yeah.
unknown:Oh my god.
SPEAKER_04:But if I rolled stuff up, threw it in a bottle and then threw it out in the ocean. It's not really throwing it away. Somebody will find it eventually. But those those cards I always tell my husband or anybody when you go to a calling hours, yeah. God damn, take one of them cards. Because you can't, I can't throw that away. Now it's got a picture of a dead person on it. Yes. But damn it, every time I find them, there's they're they're hidden in purses, they're hidden in wallets, they're hidden in people's pockets.
SPEAKER_00:My score code has a bunch all of those word codes.
SPEAKER_04:I'm like, Jesus, I tell you not to why do you feel the need to pick that up? You know why you're there, you know who died. You probably probably know when they died, when they were born. You don't need the prayer, you just need the QR code. That's all. Don't pick those up. Eventually you score so many of them. We got a deck of cards. You can play go fish. Go fish. At least now we're re repurposing this stuff. Do you have a Hank? Nope.
SPEAKER_01:Go fish. Hee hee hee. Would you call it go fish or go die? Ooh, that's a good one. All right. I actually found when I was in that one little box of my mom's, like, there was there was like three dust funeral cards. They were all from priests from the monastery. So I was thinking almost like, oh, I should take these down there and give these back to them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, what you gotta give me. Because I feel bad for throwing them away. Sometimes I have gotten so frustrated with them. I do like almost close my eyes and hold my breath, thinking that maybe if I'm not present by not breathing and not seeing, I'm not really the one doing it. So I'm just like, I hold my breath, close my eyes, crinkle, crinkle, toss. Okay, I don't know what I just happened. I have did I really do that?
SPEAKER_03:I don't even know.
SPEAKER_04:That's how I that's why it takes me so long to get rid of stuff because I'm holding my breath and closing my eyes.
SPEAKER_01:It's just a nightmare. This goes into that uh idiosyncrasies and superstitions that we did an episode on. We should have talked about that.
SPEAKER_04:Well, it's just they they keep coming to me. The other little quick thing I'm gonna touch on, because uh we've been really focused on this whole death thing. Whoa. Um habit of doing that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you have your thanophiliacs, is that the term?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the uh the fear of death. No, your philiacs.
SPEAKER_00:You gotta keep talking about it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right, that's right. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_04:That's I don't want to be that. The inheritance and the passing down, which was very important to people of our parents' age and before that, and maybe some people of our age still do this, but of the China, the crystal, the silver. Yeah, they had all this. They want to pass so you're getting your mother's or your grandmother's China 12-piece play setting. Yeah. This crystal that nobody from 50, 75, 100 years ago. Right. I'm not putting my orange juice or my Coca-Cola in that glass. It's probably got lead. You're gonna get lead poisoning. You get lead poisoning, right? Yeah. So do I want this stuff? No, it's gonna break, and then I'll feel bad, but then I won't. I'll be glad it broke, and then I'll feel bad because I feel glad that it broke.
SPEAKER_01:So it's just this endless Yeah, that kind of stuff I have less, I have an easier time of uh taking that to goodwill if I if I had something. But actually, I do remember that over the years when when um my sisters and I were kind of inheriting some of that stuff, and then when we went through my mom's stuff, I did not, I was like, you you guys can have that. Like I there was like only one or two little things that I kept, but I was like, nah, I don't I don't want that. I I don't have a need for it, I don't host enough parties, I don't know, no, but if I came across that, I would definitely be like, Yeah, that can go to goodwill.
SPEAKER_04:Now I would be open to taking on, and I think it is nice to have like decorations, especially like Christmas ornaments and stuff. I did get from Nick's uh sister, gave them to me, they belong to his mom, and uh they are like my favorite thing outside of the stuff my kids have made that I put on my tree. They are those, and they were actually made in uh Youngstown. They are these ornaments that have the little metal piece in them.
SPEAKER_00:You guys have referenced it on the show, like one of your first ornaments. Right.
SPEAKER_04:They spin from the heat, from the tree.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and And I I love the if you go if they're by the light, yeah. The heat of the light.
SPEAKER_04:And sometimes people complain because they you put them on a tree now and the new lights because they are made to not have emit so much heat. They don't work. They may not work. Right. But I mean I just those I I like. So something like that, a keepsake like that, where an ornament where I can put it out once a year. Right. And it doesn't really take that much space because I'm storing it with my other Christmas stuff I have anyhow. Right. But the dishes, and and people we talked about this a couple episodes, how horrible I was about being a bridal manager and registering people for stuff 30 years ago. Um I don't think registries don't look like that anymore. No. People are not registering for China, Crystal, and silver. No. At all. No. They just want, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Much more practical. Yes, right.
SPEAKER_04:So if we want to give anybody who's younger than us generally not any credit, but we will on this. You're very practical about what you want gifted to you when you make the commitment to be made.
SPEAKER_01:And I don't think nowadays there's that keeping of sentimental things and passing it down as much either. So, you know, they're they're not looking at, oh, if I get this, then I'm gonna have this forever to pass down to my children. No, if they buy, if they get a crock bot, they're gonna use that crock bot until it dies and it's gonna go in the garbage. You know what I mean? They'll be fighting over QR codes. Yes.
SPEAKER_04:That seems to be the new thing. Where's dad's QR code? I know you're keeping it. I want it. Is that how that's gonna go?
SPEAKER_01:Pretty much. I will have to say, this is a great plug for one of my blogs on our website.
SPEAKER_04:Is um I was aimed at me, I think.
SPEAKER_01:No, it wasn't aimed at you. It just really was good information for you. It was. Thanks for suggestive. Yes, but it was it's so relevant to what we're talking about and what we're going through right now. The book is called Nobody Wants Your Shit by Messi Kondo. It's it's uh it's it's a great uh audiobook, it's great to listen to, it's down to earth, but it gives you a lot of tips about things like this. So I write about it on my blog, and which is on our dysfunction junkiespodcast.com website. It really, it's really good. So if if this is resonating with you today, you need to listen to those books.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it'll help. Yeah, and it gives you some humor too.
SPEAKER_01:It is hysterical. So well, I'm gonna get back to uh packing up my house and trying to get rid of useless shit. There you go. I I will try to do the same. But if I will want to say though, please make sure to check out our website because we have a lot of great information on there and we've got all our episodes on there. We've got information on where Chrissy and I are being at, if we have any events coming up. And in the month of November, we are supporting uh the organization Sleep in Heavenly Peace. They provide beds to children. So look up and uh learn about them. If there's a chapter near you, you can maybe get involved with a bed build or simply donate to help a child have a bed this Christmas. Yes. Alrighty, we'll see you next week, junkies. Bye, everybody.
