Thursday, August 14, 2014

As Billy Joel said, "I'm Moving Out!"



There is no such thing as an easy move unless you are in a college dorm!  But then you may have had your parents helping you so you were not alone.

For the past two months we have been going through each room and storage area in the house and just shake our heads at how much we accumulated in almost 14 years in our home.  That is not counting the other 16 years of living in our previous home where the contents came along with us to our current one.

As I have now stated to anyone who will listen, there is no such thing as "What If?"  I will no longer say that we have to save something because what if we need it later? What if the kids want to see the cards they sent us when they were in Kindergarten?  What if I gain weight and I need to wear my old jeans?  What if I need that 40th basket or glass vase?

Out it all will go but at least we were able to donate so much to some organizations which do need those things.

Cleaning out is not only tedious and dirty, it is back breaking and neck hurting. Not to mention that I cut myself on a broken hanger.  Someone asked me why we didn't have help doing all this, and I answered that a stranger could not help us go through 30 years of memories before throwing it all out.   

Last week I was working in the last room of the basement and found a shopping bag buried under 5 cargo bags which have not been used since our daughters stopped going to camp.  I could not imagine what was in that shopping bag so I took it upstairs and started going through it.

I had to call my husband and tell him what I had found...all his "drawings" of me when we first dated and then when I was pregnant.  I laughed so hard at the captions to the drawings that tears came down and actually smudged the ink on the pages!  These are definitely a book in the making. Ok, so I was happy that I had not thrown this out. And I am going to keep these precious drawings until I can scan them and put them on a USB drive.

We think that saving all our kids' everything is great and that they will want all of it when they get older.  But the truth is, or at least in my situation, they loved seeing it all, took some photos and then said it was ok to throw away. They have no room to store any of it!  

More and more people I speak with tell me how much they save.  I tell them my story.  They say that is good to know, but I know that most of them will continue to save and save. It seems to be human nature.

Please remember that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you can always call Big Brothers Big Sisters at 1-877-399-2570 or schedule a pick up at:  www.bbbsdonate.org.  They will come to your house with a truck to get your items.  Also call the Vietnam Veterans of America at 1-800-775-8337 or go online to schedule a pick up at: www.scheduleapickup.com. Both groups are wonderful and are so grateful for your donations. Just be aware of what they won't take, such as TV's and they can't take anything that 1 person can't pick up by themselves, like a big sofa.

Needless to say, we don't ever want to experience this again. If we never save a paint can again, it will be too soon.