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Hunterseat- that's very sweet of you to help her out. I'm sure she appreciates it!
Dealing with things as an elderly person has to be extra overwhelming. My parents need to massively downsize before they move. After we move, I'll be driving distance to go help.
Bizcuit- good luck and try to stay calm. The good news, after a few crazy days, it will be done and heading to your new place! Sorry, I forget, are you moving locally or out of state?
NY Flo- I bet the new paint reenergized your whole room. The yard sale will be good motivation!
I recycled 6 totes full of old papers, 6 grocery bags full of plastic, and donated some house supplies to the Habitat restore.
Today, I have packed more non essentials - the kids' yearbooks, baby blankets, board games, snd baby blankets.
The reality is that probably I should be donating more since we seem to have many boxes of non-essentisls! Baby steps. We'll see how things fit in the next place and maybe I'll regret moving some of it.
I need to start painting but I guess I enjoy packing more than painting! It all has to get done by mid-March.
Bizcuit- good luck and try to stay calm. The good news, after a few crazy days, it will be done and heading to your new place! Sorry, I forget, are you moving locally or out of state?
What I'm finding is that it seems to be easier and easier to get rid of stuff the closer the moving date gets! Pretty soon I'll be chucking everything in the bin! (Move date Feb. 15)
I always think: what if there is a fire and everything gets lost.... Which items would I regret losing? This is how I mentally separate the *needed* from the *not-so-much-needed*.
The first *needed* one is documents. Something that is hard or too bureaucratic to restore. Passports, birth certificates, diplomas, etc. That goes into a bank vault. The second one is media/pictures/videos. The memories. If it's too much for any cloud provider's storage, it goes onto a hard disk, and into the vault, as well.
I don't even have trouble mentally with getting rid of stuff at this stage. I'm just physically exhausted by hauling around big contractor bags filled with stuff, up and down the stairs, to my car, to the dump, to the donation bids. Over and over again. So exhausted, I'm staggering. Anyway, tomorrow morning is the move. It is what it is. I'll have to do some additional decluttering on the other side.
One thing that I am investing in is a closet organization system for my bedroom, laundry room and hallway closets. The rep was out to the new house last week. It will be installed in early March.
If it helps, older folks can have a couple of issues with decluttering. The first happens if they've lost a spouse. It can be difficult to part with things. When my husband and I got together, he had to look at every single thing I threw out. He'd lost his wife a year before and it was difficult for him to let go. He still sometimes wants to go over things before I throw them out, but now he's willing to let stuff go on his own.
The second is the physical work. It helps us if we have someone younger to work with. We still have to go through it all ourselves, but they can bag it up. Fortunately for us, the guy that is packing up most of our stuff has offered to go back with us on the move and help us unload. That's going to be great because I already have things I'd like to use now that I can't find. At least he was able to tell us where he put the long stringers for my quilting frame.
Spousal Unit is reorganizing his woodworking shop in the garage. So far, he's decided to let go of a radial arm saw and an extra air compressor, plus a broken floor fan and the chlorine dispenser and tablets we no longer need, since the pool was converted to salt. Next, he's burrowing his way toward the gas range we brought with us, only to find the house we chose is all electric. When he finally uncovers it, we'll give it to Habitat for Humanity's Re-Store in town.
He's finally recognizing that if he puts all the like items in one place, he can see how much of it he has and how much he does not need. Since he's on a roll now, I'm being quite the cheerleader.
Now I have to decide: do I give up all the canning jars, my McClellan saddle, and my scroll saw? Decisions, decisions...
Moving update: I moved on Tuesday and it was a hellish, long, long day. But it got done and I'm in now and in the process of unpacking. I have all of the living room and most of the kitchen unpacked and put away at this stage. I am liberally throwing out more stuff if it's something I haven't used in a while (threw out, or gave away a lot of stuff before moving too).
I am so, so glad to be on this end of the move now. I don't remember my last move being this exhausting. I'm so tired still, that I feel like I'm recovering from surgery or something.
Four days till our move. I'm hoping the weather clears a little bit - what a time to be moving!
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