The Long, Gradual Purge
Right now there is a hurry up and wait feeling with the move. We have a lot to sort out, but much of what we need to do needs to wait until we get closer to the move. We plan to rent our house out when we move, so getting everything we own out of the house is a major undertaking. We have a contractor that has already updated our two half-bathrooms, but we will need to have them paint the inside top-to-bottom. We also will have the carpets replaced. But we can’t do those things right now because we have two young boys that will inevitably stain anything new in seconds flat. Also, we need to get all of the large items out of the living room and basement so the contractors can easily get to everything they need to access.
Each weekend, Kate and I have been choosing one small area of the house to tackle, usually involving purging crap that’s accumulated over the eight years we’ve lived in the house. Last weekend, over the long weekend, I went through every single piece of paper we had in the house. Good thing I kept that Costco receipt for protein bars from 2017. Seriously. Why don’t we ever throw things out right away? We’re getting rid of probably 99% of the paper we have been holding. Obvious things we are keeping are closing documents for the house and other important items. But soooo much useless unnecessary paper! We just had two snow storms (“storm” used loosely as I’m from Rochester, NY, and that term hits differently in Northern VA). But once the snow melts, Kate and I are going to bring the giant plastic bag of all of the papers that we don’t need (but don’t want to just trash as there is personal info listed) and burn them all in our fire pit. That should be a good time.
Let’s talk for a moment about accumulated crap from kids. My boys are now 11 and 6 years old. We still have baby toys sitting around. The common theme I’m sure many of my fellow parents can relate to is buying some coveted toy or game for your kids, it gets played with once, then gets put away and forgotten about as they would rather play with a wadded up ball of paper. Crap just shoved in drawers and shelves never to be thought about again until, well, now. Necessity is the mother of getting rid of shit. We’re trying to work with our boys to have them make decisions on what they keep and what they get rid of. Every couple of weeks, we give our boys a cardboard box, and we tell them to fill it with toys and books that they no longer want so we can donate it to goodwill. We’re getting there. Slowly but surely. But mostly slowly. So Kate an I will need to make decisions for them.
But let me be clear. This in no way absolves me from my contribution to the accumulation of stuff. I have a bunch of keepsakes, where in normal circumstances, would be perfectly reasonable to hold on to. But we’re now past that stage. Hard decisions need to be made. I still have the stat print-outs my dad kept of my travel soccer team from when I was 13 as he was the coach. (My dad was a bit OCD when it came to tracking stats for a youth soccer team and similar endeavors, but that was part of his charm.) There is no legitimate reason for me to hold on to this stuff, but it’s a small part of him that I got to hold on to to remind me of who he was. He passed away when I was 17 right before my senior year of high school. Some of these things hold a lot of sentimental value to me. But do I really need to know who was the leading scorer of my 13 year old soccer team? (It was me, but who’s really keeping track.)
So right now, it’s a lot of the easier decisions of what we are getting rid of and what we’re keeping. As we get closer, the plan is to move our Lovesac sofa and super nice mattress into storage as it’ll be cheaper to store them than purchase new items if and when we return after Kate’s three year contract is up. I’m not really looking forward to making the hard decisions. But at the same time, it’s liberating. I’m being forced to embrace living more minimally. Memories are the items I want to keep with me. Not useless crap that adds no true value to our lives that just sits in boxes for years on end until accidentally being stumbling upon once in a blue moon just to get all nostalgic and melancholy.
