My grandmother was an incessant collector. She collected anything in the shape of a chicken or with a chicken on it, and her house was lined with shelves of ch

My grandmother was an incessant collector. She collected anything in the shape of a chicken or with a chicken on it, and her house was lined with shelves of chicken nick-nacks. But she also had an impressive wind-up toy collection, a collection of cherubs, a collection of supposedly collectable porcelain dolls from QVC. Probably a few others that I've forgotten. In the last few years of her life, she became very concerned with the work her children and grandchildren would have to undertake to clean out her house. She went through and added a note on a sticker on the backs of things for who she though should get them. But in the end it was easy. My grandmother created an order of magnitude more grief for herself worrying about cleaning up after her than actually existed. And I wish that she hadn't had that burden on her. Most of her children and grandchildren didn't have any sentimental connection to all of the things, and those of us that did went through and grabbed what we wanted. Once that was done, we called Goodwill and they came and cleaned out the rest.