Our house, which we have been renovating full-time for the past year. The house that we love and adore, is going up for sale next week. The appraiser comes Wednesday, her report will give us an indication on how much value this work had on the property. Then we list it. Sometime this winter we started to get itchy feet. Another move is imminent. More change on the horizon. Exciting stuff. In the meantime …
We have way too much stuff.
Way, way too much stuff.
Where do I start when it comes to getting rid of the “stuff” you mentally can’t part with? I struggle with paring down the items that I have lovingly collected over the years, the baby and childhood stuff. Everything else is a bit easier. For now, we are leaving the hard choices for round three.
Round one was easy. We got rid of over twenty boxes of clothes, shoes, kitchen crap and books. Seriously. Truly. It was easy. Anyone can do round one.
When it comes to round two, its been tough. One of us will put an item in the “go” pile and another one of us moves it back to the “keep” pile. We are in this mode right now.
I am an all out book lover hoarder. Ten overflowing medium-sized moving boxes of books have been released back into the big world. Hundreds of books. Gone. We have kept four boxes with our absolute favorites (maybe five). They are safe for now but a very tough round three is lurking around the corner.
I must confess, more than twenty of the moving boxes we arrived in Ontario with two years ago, had never been opened prior to our recent purging phase. Most of it is now in other people’s homes. I wonder how many people have the same thing. Boxes unpacked from previous moves taking up space in their home?
One unexpectedly happy part of letting go of “stuff” was getting rid of my amazing garden boxes. (yes, happy) I worked so damn hard on setting this up last spring, but they had to go. I decided to give them and the dirt within them away. Young families, single ladies, a wide array of people came to get them. Every person that came was eager to start growing some of their own food and had a story to share. It was good for the heart.
When we moved here, I bought a lot of used “stuff” and got coined by family “the queen of kijiji”. Plenty of vintage and antique, unusual pieces. I do love them. I don’t need them though and I will repeat this until it sticks. I really want the freedom more than the stuff. It takes reminders of what is important when we fall back into the old mindset.
My husband and I feel lighter each time we lessen the load of stuff holding us back and weighing us down. We seem to relax more and more, each time something leaves the property.
Much to my delight I found an old video of
