I completely underestimated what a huge undertaking moving
would be. We have lived in our current
4-bedroom, 3-bath home for 21 years.
We’ve raised 3 children from school-aged through college. We’ve remodeled, repainted, redesigned and
repurposed rooms many times. We have
acquired new tastes and hobbies and all their accoutrements over two
decades. We have accumulated stuff.
The first step in moving was to get rid of some stuff. I started with my closet. Having gained and lost weight and finally
settled at a maintainable size, it was time to let go of the extreme sized
clothes on both ends of the spectrum.
Knowing I am retiring soon also allowed me to let go of a lot of career
clothing. Many bags of clothing headed
to Goodwill. My husband, Shawn, did the
same on his side of the closet.
We cleared out our mini-storage and put the stored stuff in
our garage so we could have everything in one place and get a better idea of
how much stuff we really have. The
answer? Too much stuff.
Next we started going through other closets and cupboards in
the house and decided we had enough excess stuff to warrant a garage sale. Furniture, books, videos, lots of kitchen
stuff, camping gear, holiday decorations, more clothing…we hoped this would
bring in a few dollars. Mid-December is
not a popular time for garage sales, but we gave it a try anyway. Luckily, we had a sunny morning and people
were happy to be outside searching for bargains. Most people were friendly and happy with
their finds, but a couple ladies took bargaining a little too far for my
liking. I priced a crystal salad bowl at
$5, but these ladies wanted it for $1. I
ended up giving it to a nice lady for nothing.
It’s not always about the money.
We got rid of lots of stuff that day and made a few dollars. The rest went to Goodwill and a few larger
items were listed for sale on Nextdoor.
It was fortuitous that we had our annual “bulky waste
pickup” in December. This allowed us to
pile a lot of garage and yard detritus in the street for garbage hauling. We also took bags and boxes of household
toxins and e-waste to our city recycling center.
Now it was time to start really looking through the stuff
and begin packing. We’ve had a sturdy
brown box marked “Camping” in our garage for years, yet we never open it each
summer when it’s time for camping, so what could be in it? Shoeboxes, each neatly labeled with the
year. And inside the shoeboxes? Envelops filled with that year’s bills. I know you’re supposed to keep important tax
papers for 7 years, but these were from the early 90s. Let the shredding begin.
We are using PODS to move our stuff to Idaho. Since we plan to put our California house up
for sale in January, we ordered a POD for the first of the year so we could
de-clutter and make our house look spacious, per our realtor Joey. We planned to have a second POD delivered in
March for the final move. After the
first POD arrived and we filled it, we knew we could not fit all our stuff into
only two PODS. Now we’re filling two
PODS in January and another one in March.
I had grand plans to be very organized while packing
boxes. I wanted to strategically place
things in boxes that belonged in the same room, closet, or cupboard in the new
house. That lasted for about two boxes. Not wanting to make boxes too heavy, there
was a lot of mixing and matching going on.
A box of books topped with a quilt.
A box with a bathroom light fixture, 3 quilting rulers, a gym bag and a
stuffed bear.
Remember those shoeboxes in the camping box? Well it turns out that wasn’t the only place
I had stashed old bills. There were
filled shoeboxes in the back of my closet, under my desk, in the linen
cupboard, and the oldest box dating back to 1988 in my cedar chest. Thank God I started scanning papers in 2012
and this will not be an issue moving forward.
Although it was kind of fun finding a paystub from my first job out of
college.
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