Moving Means Letting Go

 

1. And yet, neither of us are anywhere near the packrat my grandfather was.  Holy cow did that man have stuff! 

   I was fortunate to move into a considerably larger place.  However, my wife got rid of 18 big black trash bags full of her clothing and she still has a closet full.  I dumped about 20 older computers and related attachments, but kept a few that were good units.  Hauled several truckloads of pure junk off to the dump.  Still debating about selling the shop tools.  I never get a chance to use them and they take up a lot of space.

   The only thing I had to have moved was the piano...too expensive and heavy to do myself.  The rest was all hard labor!

   Posted by John C       08/28/2009  at  04:41 PM  



2. I’m doing plenty of that myself.

   Moving also lets you know who your true friends are. Everyone else suddenly has a tooth ache or a tax audit.

   It’s not like I wouldn’t provide food and beer or anything.

   Posted by Drew458       08/28/2009  at  06:10 PM  



3. Thats what Craiglist is for if you have the time. So far with my partner we’ve netted 18k this year selling all kinds of crap.And no ebay fees.Just a thought.

   Posted by Rich K       08/28/2009  at  06:26 PM  



4. Anything you don’t sell. Donate, keep receipts and claim high value on the good stuff. If it’s good enough for Bill Clinton’s underwear......

   Posted by Punkins       08/28/2009  at  07:02 PM  



5. I’m sure the local Veteran’s charity would love your donations!!!!

   Posted by Vilmar       08/28/2009  at  07:24 PM  



6. I feel for you! I’m living in my mother’s house, now that she’s passed, with years of stuff, the stuff from my apartment, AND the stuff from our house when my ex-husband moved out and left all the junk we had accumulated over 20years. I think it’s all breeding in the corners at night, cause no matter how much I sell and give away, there always seems to be more.

   Posted by candyuniverse       08/28/2009  at  08:48 PM  



7. Been de-cluttering here too, 15 years of debris takes times! The VHS I wanted to keep were converted over to DVD using Dazzle which works pretty darn good.

   I’m getting ready to scan in a bunch of photo so they can be retired too, give me something to do when it rains out.

   The dump / Ebay / Craigslist has really been getting a workout and it still looks like I have made little progress!

   Posted by gdonovan       08/29/2009  at  05:22 AM  



8. Yeah - we thinned down a lot with the last three moves - first time I walked away from stuff (we left an old school locker filled with Army overflow) - too bad, if I had known he was going to do it - I had people at the yard sale willing to buy - this was pre-cell phone days.

   Only stuff I have a hard time dumping is books - if Fahrenheit 451 takes place - we have our own library - it’s a start. And the saddles (3 now - somewhere 2 went MIA - pisses me off as I have a suspicion where those went). My only connection to my dad that I have left (well them and a dozen books he signed over to me, the year he died).

   I’ve taken to plastic boxes - files and stuff I want to keep, old baby clothes, the sewing stuff and so on and so on. But not as bad as in past years. But yeah we have vinyl (not played, the turntable is still in a box), cassettes (rarely played anymore)- although I thinned them down a lot, CDs,VHS & VHS-C (our video camera), DVDs and of course PS2s. We have computer stuff and all my crafty stuff - plus a train collections (a few Lionel) and his N-gauge and my Coke Cola collection. But is much less than in years gone by (two of four have claimed all their childhood junk too - which helps immensely).

   I now donate the replaced linens and clothes to the Vietnam Veterans group here - and we shop for Halloween at GoodWill - figure between the two - we are covering our bases.

   It takes a real family tragedy to make you realize how truly worthless all the ‘stuff’ is - SGT Greg Stubbe (Special Forces, injured in Afghanistan) said it best - ‘It’s not that we learned what we value most, we learned what we value least’.

   And it’s a very hard lesson to learn.

   Posted by wardmama4       08/29/2009  at  06:30 AM  



9. The only things of real value are the 20+ boxes of genealogy stuff that came from a combination of parents and grandparents.  I am working like crazy to get it all scanned and linked in the computer, but in most cases it is one page at a time…

   Posted by John C       08/29/2009  at  09:23 PM  

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