What did we keep?

We did it! One, 10x10 (x10?) storage unit, a suitcase each, a back pack each.... and a trailer full of boxes and small furniture that will soon be left with older kids in Utah and Idaho... and various odds and ends that we haven't quite shed yet (extra books, extra paper, extra pencils pens etc... but we have almost done it! We are leaving for Northern Colorado on Saturday where we will stay for a little while and then on to see the big kids and hand off the last trailer load of boxes that are still following us around. And then we are truly free. Assuming we have given up those other extras too. But we will!

Purging was a pretty extensive project and we utilized whatever means was available. We sold most of the bigger things on craigslist: couches, beds, dressers, treadmill, desks, tables, bookshelves (so many bookshelves!) and the extra car. We held a one day yard sale extravaganza with smaller things and stuff that hadn't gone on craigslist yet. We donated to goodwill and the homeless shelter downtown. We had friends with a junk-hauling business take away at least two truckloads. We gave away lots of books and toys and games, and we threw stuff away like crazy. It was intense. And somehow therapeutic.

I look at our packed storage unit and know that someday, I will have to go through it all again and I will wonder why I kept some of this. I doubt I will experience much regret about what I didn't keep, because it just doesn't seem to work that way. The things I have let go in the past just fade from my memory and I don't miss them.

So... what did we store and what did we not?

Toys: We stored a lot more toys than we needed to I think. But it was a conscious decision because we didn't want to delve into all the boxes right now. Our youngest child is eleven, much of the toys we still had were already in storage boxes, we just moved them from garage to storage unit. We did get rid of many too, but some we chose not to make a decision on yet. Like Lego. So much Lego. Individual children's lego, family lego, Kris's childhood Lego. So much Lego.

Books: We probably got rid of three- fourths of our books. But our book collection was extensive and there are still several boxes of them. I finally parted with most of my college books. We gave away the majority of our homeschooling books. Most of the paperbacks are gone. I kept my favorite history resources. I have a decent collection of antique hardbacks, my 'pretty' books, and I kept them. The kids all kept their favorite books, and they had first chance at any I was giving away too, but those are stored in their boxes.

Kitchen Stuff: We kept enough to reasonably stock a possible future kitchen. I kept the best baking pans and my pots and pans and the best dishes. I kept the Bosch and Kitchenaid and Blender. The toaster is going to one of my sons, the waffle irons and griddle to grown kids too, the rice cooker to goodwill. We donated storage containers and cookie cutters and canning jars.

Furniture: We kept our mattress and boxspring and 3 twin mattresses, we kept our office and sewing desks (but not chairs), we kept our television stand (and the tv) and the trunk from the bottom of our bed, we kept two living room lamps and an area rug. All the other furniture is gone. Well, there are some throw pillows.

Kids' Stuff: We never told the kids what they could and could not keep really and so it varies widely from one child to the next. The grown kids already had their stuff mostly boxed up of course, though when we got serious about packing, we found plenty of things hanging around the house that needed to be added to each of their piles: dishes, books, coats, games. Depending on the child, they have anywhere from two to six boxes stored.

There are other odds and ends in there: bedding, office supplies, some electronics, photo albums, old art work, a few baby clothes and blankets. But so much is gone, so far we have all been just fine, and tomorrow we leave for Northern Colorado.

Eating all our food storage

Whenever we move, food storage is always a challenge.  Because I store food.  Lots of it.  If I plan to make lasagna next week, I buy the ingredients for lasagna times three and store the extra in my basement. That way, in times of famine or when I really DO NOT want to go to the store, we can still have lasagna.  We don't just have your basic overstocked kitchen pantry.  We have a basement room full of food and an extra refrigerator.  We have a garage with two huge chest freezers (one for fruit and bread and ice cream and a separate one for meat and fish and green chilies....duh).  We store flour and sugar in six gallon tubs and own and USE a wheat grinder on a fairly regular basis.  We even have over 100 gallons of water stored in the garage.

Or rather we DID own those extra freezers and fridge.  I sold them.  We DID have a basement room stocked with food, before we took all the shelving to our storage unit to better organize there.  And the water storage drums were dumped out and sold too.  And this all presents a unique problem. All that stored food must be consumed.  Not just the freezer and refrigerator items, though those are more urgent for sure, but I'm not taking cans of tomato sauce on any oversea flights next fall and space is limited in the car during this summer's epic road trip too. So, ever since the house officially went on the market, we have been trying to make up our meals primarily from food storage items.

At first this was just fine, like I said, all the ingredients for lasagna times three were sitting on the shelves. And the boys didn't really mind helping me to rid the freezer of steaks and roasts.  But now we are reaching weird levels. One day last week we had platters full of breaded and fried mahi mahi accompanied only by a berry smoothie. Who knew Ronan was such a fine fry-cook?  We dipped our fish in honey.  Not bad. We ate broccoli basically every other day for nearly three weeks until we finally ran out, next up: edamame. We have a lot of pasta to consume and so I let Fionnula make macaroni and cheese more often than can possibly be good for any of us.  Tonight though I made black bean hummus for the first time.  It was fabulous.  Good thing cause there are six more cans of black beans to go through and we leave the house in less than two weeks.

Its not just food either.  Basically, if its consumable, we have a back log of it: my favorite face wash, shampoo, toilet paper.  School supplies too: pens, pencils, notebook paper, art supplies. So many art supplies.  Up until now, in our ordinary life, this has been a good policy.  We seldom run out of the things we need.  Even the things we need to make silly putty and grow crystals.  Well, we're making lots of silly putty now.  And that vinegar and baking soda reaction never gets old, especially when you have eight or nine food coloring colors to choose from.  It will be an adjustment learning to live without the fully stocked closets and cabinets and pantries and freezers. But for now, every time I squeeze the last bit from a shampoo bottle or finish off another jar of peanut butter, I have a tiny little celebration that one more thing is gone.

Craigslist and Me

I am a Craigslisting fool.  Pretty sure I can make that a verb. Just about every piece of furniture in our house is listed on Craigslist.  I field emails and texts from potential new owners of our stuff all day and well into the night.  In fact Craigslist is apparently a popular pastime around 11 pm.  Ideally it goes like this:  I post a picture, a price, and a brief description on Craigslist; people email me through Craigslist and ask (almost every single time) "Do you still have this chair/shelf/bed?," I email back that yes I do (which is why it is still listed) and give them my cell number to text me if they want to see it, they text, I give them an address, they come and buy my stuff.  Except the communication can break down at any time in that sequence.  People who express an initial interest through email may not follow up with a text.  Just because someone texted and seemed posed to be at my door that very evening, does not mean I will ever hear from them again, let alone actually succeed in selling them that chair/bed/shelf.

The garage is a constantly shifting stage.  I wish I had thought to do pictures. As I list things on Craigslist, we move furniture from each room of the house to the garage, so that we don't need to lead strangers through the house to look at the things we hope they will buy.  Our beds and dressers, bookshelves from every room in the house, the dining room table, couches, chairs, the basement fridge, each have taken their brief turn in the garage before they have been loaded into the pick up trucks of friends and strangers and taken away. Everyday we have fewer pieces of furniture in the house.

A sampling of my Craigslist experiences over the past two weeks:

The guy who decided against the used bed I was selling out of my garage because he "want(ed) something that would last a long time," and this one had some scratches in the paint job.  Well, he was right, it did.  It also was a fraction of the price of the same bed, unscratched, that he could probably find at a nice new furniture store, but this was a Craigslist sale, dude.

The guy who said he wanted my dresser, walked into my garage, handed me exactly what we had asked for it  and promptly loaded said dresser into his truck. Easiest sale ever.

The couple who stood on my porch discussing at length the flaws of my bookshelf which "looked darker and more like oak" in the picture and wasn't solid wood but a veneer.  He asked her multiple times "What do you think?  It's for your office?" And she kept saying "Hmmmm, I don't know, hmmmm."  Seriously, this same exchange at least three times before they decided against it.

The father and his young sons who bought a bunkbed and then proceeded to strap the various parts to the top of their very tiny car.

The elderly mother and daughter who came to buy a desk but also to chat at length about a variety of topics mostly irrelevant to the sale of said desk.

The little boy named Liam who came with his Dad to take apart and take away the play house and kept calling my Liam "Other Liam," and asking where Other Liam had gone and asking Other Liam to come find him.  The play house was one of our "free if you dissassemble and cart away" items, both of which were extremely popular, so Liam was here to play for quite awhile while his daddy and uncle and my husband and sons labored to take apart and load up that play house.

Mostly this getting rid of stuff has been a very gratifying experience.  It feels good to have less stuff. It does seem to me that up until now we have been focused on acquiring more and better things, and now we have suddenly about-faced and are focused instead on getting rid of all we have so carefully accumulated.  And we probably had (until about 3 weeks ago) nicer "stuff" than we have ever had. The couch I sold yesterday was seriously a really great couch.  But it was just a couch too.  And, it is fun to meet the little boy who will play in the play house that my kids won't use anymore.  It is fun to find a new home for our piano, which we did love, but which would do no one any good sitting in storage for one or two or ten years.  And every item that goes to a new home gets us a little bit closer to being able to travel unencumbered by excessive stuff.

I own what?!

We are in the midst of an extensive purge of stuff.  The goal is to fit all our belongings either in a couple pieces of luggage each or in a ten by ten storage unit.  It is an interesting project.  And sometimes exhausting. Everyday I am snapping pics of furniture to post on craigslist and sending texts to my big kids asking if they want this book or these dishes, does anyone want my nightstands or a sewing machine or the kitchen table. Everyday we pack more boxes and sort through more clothing.  We have organized piles of boxes around the house.  This stack goes to grown kids.  This stack goes into storage.  That stack is to donate. That stack is to sell.  And then there is the undecided stack.  That's the tough one, all the stuff that will require further thought.  And work.

There can be something truly liberating about letting go of things though.  For reals.  First there is the guilt complex that some of my stuff just radiates! Books I should have read.  Projects I should have done.  But as soon as I remove that book or that fabric or whatever it is from my house, that pressure to do the task that that thing was constantly reminding me I hadn't yet done is just gone.  And it feels pretty good.  I am no longer a bad mother whose younger children cannot remember ever having been camping with the family, I am just someone who owns no camping gear.  A quilt I started to make more than 20 years ago which I have secretly hated almost from the beginning, but which I have felt all along that I 'should' finish it?  Well it is gone.  So there, I can't finish it.

Then there is just the responsibility and time involved in owning and organizing stuff.  We went through all our games last weekend.  We cleared out the cabinet in the dining room that housed all the little card games and travel sized games and chess pieces and dice (YES! we had a tub full of dice),  as well as the big closet that had all the bigger board games.  Now they are all in boxes to store or in a pile to give away and suddenly I don't need to spend another minute organizing the game closet for the millionth time, gathering up and properly distributing all the various game pieces that have mysteriously escaped their assigned box and are roaming freely on the shelves.  It is almost as though I have gained hours of free time that used to be dedicated to putting things away or fixing things or finding things.  Now I have some guilt free time to actually play the few games we kept out to use now.

Of course some things are harder than others to discard or even to put out of sight.  Some of my books were hard... what if I suddenly need to look something up in that particular history book?  What if I decide to re read all the Harry Potter books right now? What if I just like seeing my pretty books on the shelves?  Or my cute little elephant collection for that matter?  But its ok, I put those things in a box, I labeled the boxes, we will put them all in storage and I will see them again sometime.