You know how it goes. You have your kids, you use all the “stuff,” they outgrow everything, and over time the attic becomes a museum of what was once life in the present.

All those things migrated to the attic in due seasons (just in case we needed them again), only to find those things became relics of a time that seemed much simpler, yet was just as harrowing — especially having baby twins and a 2-year-old in the house at the same time.

I was doing well just to get my hair combed in those days, let alone get things to the attic so elastic could harden and baptismal candles could flatten in the summer heat and humidity.

Our daughter moved away to college first, and two years later our sons were at the fork in the road of life. They wanted to farm, and there was another place nearby where they could live. But it turned out that when they graduated from high school, we were the ones who ended up moving out, leaving them to have a bonafide bachelor pad on the farm where they grew up.

My rugs and kitchen nearly gave their lives in exchange for such gleeful independence.

We took much of our life with us in that original move, but left things like furniture and appliances behind for them since they didn’t have any of their own at that time.

Thirteen years later, it was time to clean things out to make room for others to live their lives and create memories in that house, which we purchased from our neighbors and moved there (now) three decades ago. At the time, we couldn’t believe that big house could be ours.

Attics are hallowed places. So many memories live there undisturbed. But now it was time to exhume this life we once had and figure out what to do with all of it.

The near-archaeological experience was soul-feeding, and sorrowfully bittersweet at the same time. It represented the sheer volume of the life and blessings we’d been given, and of the years that had passed, reminding us that we were getting older, too.

There were toys that hadn’t been used in 25 years; kids clothing, high chairs, car seats, booster seats, preschool backpacks, elementary school papers, 4-H projects and ribbons, a baby crib, toddler youth bed and other bed frames, Christmas decorations, tax returns, dishes, and an important pile that needed to be addressed — that huge pile of empty boxes from which I used to draw when I needed a box to wrap a gift. (Doesn’t everyone have a pile like that??) Those boxes all saw the burn pile following a bucket brigade-like removal from the attic.

But one of the things that stopped me in my tracks was an arm cast that one of our sons sported when he fell from the monkey bars at school during his kindergarten year. I read each name and message on the cast … and remembered when (at that young age), he told us with a heavy heart from a hospital bed that he was sorry he broke his arm, and he didn’t mean to do it.

That memory was nearly as unforgettable as the time that same boy (then in first grade) brought home a large decorated plastic egg from school as part of a Mother’s Day gift. He extracted it from his backpack and presented it to me after he got off the bus, and was quite proud of it — so I made a big deal out of it, as mothers do.

Then he said it.

“It had candy in, but I got hungry.”

As I finished the attic job, I swept up soot and nails, with a little bat poop from far-reaching corners sprinkled in. House re-shingling and bat entry created such a cocktail. My husband scaled the outside of the house when a bat or two invited themselves in; he pinpointed their entry hole near an attic window and plugged it.

Thankfully the bats became a distant memory, or I may have.

It was quite a trip down memory lane; but now it was time for someone else’s memories to live there. The family before us cleaned it out for our memories; now it was our turn.

It was a trip that could only be duplicated by leafing through old photo albums.

Ugh. WHAT are we going to do with those now???

Attics are, indeed, hallowed places.

Karen Schwaller writes from her grain and livestock farm near Milford, Iowa. She can be reached at kschwaller@evertek.net