The Post about Stuff

Today, we are dealing with stuff. 

Actually, we've been dealing with stuff since last Christmas. Off and on. 

It's one of the top questions I get when telling people we are moving overseas. 

What are you doing about all your stuff?

We are keeping about 60% or less of what we have. The rest has gone and is going. I'll talk about what we can't take and what we're keeping later.

Bea twirling in a skirt we found cleaning the storage room

In March, the kids (not being in school) and I started going through rooms in the house, one by one. We started with storage spaces because it disrupted day-to-day living the least. We would put hands on every single item in a room and place it in one of three piles: Keep, Go, or Trash. Sometimes there was an I-don't-know / can-I-just-deal-with-it-later pile and that was okay. Usually, the deal-later piles were pretty emotional and/or small. But here's the thing, those piles eventually needed to be sorted and dealt with too.

The process has been and remains exhausting, emotional, and cathartic.

Sometimes I'd spend a day dealing with emotionally provoking items, like old family photos that need to remain here or items that belonged to my grandmother. The next day, I would spend in bed or just watching tv, like a stunned little bird who just hit a window. And, the next day, I would get up and deal with stuff again.

Sometimes letting go of something was a multi-step process. We had piles and piles of crafts, science experiments, toys, games, photos, cds', DVDs, etc., to sort through. We took the craft and science experiments and put them in a box (okay, several boxes) and said, "If we don't do these in the next four weeks, it can go." We did some. We didn't do others. It is how Bea and I discovered how to make crystals grow on trees.

I started converting old VHS tapes to digital files before Christmas. I converted all our music cds to digital. Helena and I have scanned hundreds of old family photos (with hundreds more to go, but the clock is ticking) and organized them in binders. We've played games we've never played before to see if we like them. If we loved the game, it went to the ship pile. If we didn't, we offered it to neighbors. 

Yes, we game.

Let's just say our time during "lockdown" has not been dull or boring. We have always had something to do. Always.

Things that were broken were fixed, if possible, and then usually put in the "go" pile. If it couldn't be fixed it went to the go or trash pile. Sometimes someone would pick something up, another person would say "go", and the question would arise "Go to Scotland or go, as in, get rid of?" Rid off was a strong answer. Eventually, we had to define our terms better. Ship, donate, or trash.

It finally reached a point inside the house that all the different piles outweighed our comfortable living space. So, I forced three kids and a husband, to help me deal with the garage. It took a few of weeks. Sometimes I was alone out there, but generally at least one or two children would help; Bea, most often. But the others put their hard work into it as well. As a lot of stuff in the garage was Hugh's (tools, tents, and gear), he would join in on weekends. Everything in the garage went the same way. Ship, donate, or trash. Things that we were shipping went into the dining room which I had already sorted. That room became the "shipping" room.

Eventually, the garage was cleared (except for one small corner of items to ship). We then began shifting the donate piles from the house to the garage. Nothing about this process is tidy, I can tell you.

Sort Number One was complete. Sort of. Mostly. Enough to move on.

Sort Number Two commenced : the pile in the garage. 

The plan for a GIANT moving sale, the weekend before the movers came, fell apart. Not catching covid (ie being too close to too many people we don't know at all) just before traveling on two planes outweighed making money by far. So, we chose to sell the bigger items online and to give the rest away.

Deciding where things should disappear to was sometimes easy, sometimes not.  For example, we thought we would sell all the books, cds, and DVDs to McKay's, a used bookstore. We would take the money to purchase books missing from series we have. Then we realized that with covid, people were reading more and needing to exchange things more often so McKay's had become a petri dish of germs we did not need contact with. Disappointment abided and then relinquished itself to joy when we donated everything to our local library. 

Sometimes, I load up the car, ask "Who's going with me?", and whichever child volunteers gets to pick the charity.  In addition to books, we have donated 7 giant recycling bags of clothing and accessories to a church that Helena volunteered for with her Girl Scout Troop. I already know we'll have more bags to donate as we go through the next "sorting". 

Small household items were taken to Goodwill, games and puzzles offered to neighbors, old electronics went to our town's recycling center. Several carloads have gone to the dump. A fabulous friend and teacher from the kids' elementary school came and took a pile of crafts and goodies from us for the school's Destination Imagination program. Friends came by and took things they needed and wanted; often paying us even when we declined payment. Luckily, we realized early on, it wasn't about the money. It was about letting go.

If you're wondering how we've kept up with all this, I can tell you that it is definitely a process. One, as organized as I can be, I would sometimes get lost in. "Wait, what was I doing with this? Where is this suppose to go? What am I doing next?"

Finally, if you're also wondering how the kids are dealing with this, I have to say, they are storm troopers. On most days, they are standing with me, saying, "Bring it!" or "What today?" But I'll also say that this isn't all that new to them.  We moved to a far, far lesser degree 5 years ago.  When they were little, at birthdays and Christmas, I would say, "Whatcha gonna let go of so all the new stuff can come in?" and we would sort their stuff. Once a year, I would clean their closets out and insist that they help. If they outgrew it, hated it, or never wore it, it was donated. They are use to letting go because in learning to do it myself, I taught them how.

As a side note, some of the hardest boxes to go through during this, have been the clothing and baby items that at one point were deemed keepable, heirlooms, and hand-me-downs. We quickly realized that I had a strong love for little girl dresses, trains on boys clothing, and wooden toys. Helena and I organized clothes by size, debated the need to keep vs the desire to keep, the possibility of a future generation wanting to wear a certain style, the value of the item, and the emotions an item provoked. We laughed and cried a lot. We narrowed about 12 boxes down to 6.  The next day, Helena and I stayed in bed watching tv.

But I digress.

The girls sorted their rooms during the first sort entirely on their own, without being asked. Boxes of items from their rooms would appear in the hall. I tried my best to respect their decisions and usually succeeded, but on an extremely rare occasion, I would say, "Can we just keep this?" Mostly, I said, "Well done!"

Rhu is a blog post on his own. He sorts. At the rate of a sloth who needs a lot of naps.

That being said, I have stuff I need to go deal with. 

Sort Number Three has begun. Which is a post in and of itself.