Sharing Cherished Items with a New Generation

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Chances are, if we’ve lived a long life, we’ve accumulated a lot of items. Do we really still need it all? If someone in your family doesn’t want it, what happens then? Don’t be so quick to toss it away. Sometimes a simple household item, like a sewing machine, can mean so much to someone else.

That was the case for Kim Payne, a 62-year-old Oklahoma woman who was eagerly searching for an antique Singer sewing machine to honor precious memories.

“My grandma sewed all the time. She made clothes for all of us grandkids. I was probably around 10 years old when I learned from watching her,” Payne recalled. “I just sewed constantly.”

Years later, after her grandmother had passed, Kim had retired and felt the itch to reignite her love of sewing, but soon learned the old Singer had been sold in a garage sale. “That broke my heart. I tried to track it down in my area on Facebook, and I wasn’t having any luck at all.”

After months of disappointment, Payne’s fortunes changed. She was excited to find an ad for an antique Singer sewing machine exactly like her grandmother’s. The ad was placed by Tia Dunlap of Caring Transitions of Western Oklahoma and OKC.

“We were doing a large estate sale that was for a family where the father had passed and the mother was moving into memory care,” Dunlap said.

“We were opening up and Kim pulls up to the gate and asks, ‘Can I get in early?’ She instantly went straight for that sewing machine. Her husband looked at me and said, ‘All she’s talked about is this sewing machine,’” Dunlap explained.

Buying the sewing machine reconnected Payne to heartfelt memories of her past and her grandmother. Instead of being thrown away, the 71-year-old machine once again had a place of prominence, and of meaning. Another household filled with the familiar whirr of the straight-stitch Singer.

But there was more, something completely unexpected, a message from the past that touched the hearts of Payne, and everyone at Caring Transitions.

“About a week later, I got a letter in the mail from Kim and there was nothing but a small, green piece of construction paper that said, ‘I love you’”, recalls Dunlap. “Kim said, ‘When we were cleaning the machine out, this little piece fell out from the drawer.’”

Payne thought a grandchild might have written it and if the love note could be returned to the grandmother it might trigger a memory of good days.

Dunlap took the note to the nearby assisted living community and found the original owner of the sewing machine, Betty, who was enduring a struggle with memory loss. Dunlap discovered the love note was indeed written years prior by a grandchild.

“She just kept rubbing that little piece of paper with her little fingers,” Dunlap recalled. “To me, that tells me that we’re doing exactly what we need to be doing because maybe it wasn’t that day, but that small little note from a grandchild that said, ‘I love you’ maybe triggered a sweet memory for her another day.

“Our name, Caring Transitions, just speaks volumes. We care about what we’re doing. Every day we are touching lives.”

While Payne found her treasured sewing machine at a local estate sale, there are loads of prized possessions to explore on Caring Transitions’ online auction platform, CTBids.

And selling your items via CTBids is a way that you can honor past, current, and future generations because these memorable items that are shared on the auction platform bring new memories to life.

Whether it is a specific item you’re after or just to browse for the perfect gift for a loved one, CTBids is full of thousands of prized possessions that can have a lasting impact on families across the country.

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