“You can take the end tables,” I said to my parents. I started clearing them of their lamps, taking the coasters out of their drawers.

“But what about the lamps?  You’ll need light in the next week,” my mother said.

“Honestly, mom, the only light I ever turn on in this room is that one,” I said, pointing to the lamp next to my recliner.

“We’ll save these for you,” my father said, referring to the end table he just picked up.

“No!  Don’t save anything for me!  They’re your tables – I was just borrowing them.” I said.

Where some people stop at tourist sites and pick up souvenirs during their travels, my parents stop at antique shops and pick up furniture.  They have a completely furnished house, mind you.  Some pieces do manage to get into it.  Others they used to say were for the lake house they would one day buy.  In the meantime, they doled the pieces out to their children as needed.  They bought the aforementioned lake house six months ago – and it came completely furnished with antiques.  So those end tables will go up into the barn for storage.

“If you come back, you can–”

“Oh my gosh – dad – you don’t get it.”  I went on to, once again, explain that I don’t want anything “held onto” for me.

“Ok, ok,” he sighed as he left the apartment, table in hands.

When people here I’m giving up my apartment they often ask what I’ll do with all my furniture.  Well, there’s an easy answer to that.  Most of it belongs to my parents, so I will return it to them.  Coffee table, end tables, kitchen table and chairs, rocking chair, dresser, shelving unit – all are going back to the place they came from: Mom and Dad’s barn.  And no, I don’t want them saved for me.

What’s left? My piano.  Which will stay in the apartment.  My bed.  Which my sister is going to put in her guest room.  My couch.  Which I’m trying to sell on craigslist.  My recliner chair.  Will be stored in my parents barn.  The secretary that used to  belong to my grandmother.  None of my siblings has room for it, but none want it to be sold, so to the barn it will go.

Now I’m off to figure out what to do with all the other stuff I have left!