Locational errors.

Ok, I'm back. It's been a while. We completed to moves to Spousal Unit's apartment, and the new place in the new home town near ye olde atom mill. It was certainly not without incident. Perhaps I'll write on that later.
Currently I'm at Spousal Unit's (SU) place on a visit. She is out being a venue manager at the Fringe Festival here. And as I look around the place, my eyes invariably fall on various items we had at the old house. As I look at them, I can't not think of where in that house they used to sit. I'd thought I wouldn't miss the old house much, as I hadn't felt attached to any place since leaving the house I grew up in. But it seems that 6 years in our house (in the middle of our street) had some effect.
Over the years we've moved many times, each time throwing away more or less "junk". During this last move we disposed of a hell of a lot of stuff. Things that we didn't need, didn't want, or just failed to have any meaning to us ended up in some scrap heap or other. And then I look around at what's left, and remember where it was. Some of it links back to where I grew up. A lot of stuff from back then was pitched or given away years ago, but I sometimes still think of it when I go on little tours of the old place in my mind. I lived there for 22 years, and I can still remember every detail. From the smell of old floor wax in the utility closet, to the dirty linoleum top of the workbench my father built in the basement, to the marks I put in the underside of the built-in desk in my room when I was about 6. The objects in this mental model are part of it. Some of them I still have. Many are gone. Sometimes it feels that by getting rid of them I'm throwing away my past. Or betraying my parents.
But I also see that they are just objects. Just things. And as I get older I realize that things just aren't that important. But I still feel that link to the past through them, either to my origin many years ago, or just to the last house we lived in. Seeing them here, in different, unfamiliar places just feels strange.