David's a list maker. It calms him - it gives him purpose. So we took his laptop and went from room to room and we itemized every single piece of furniture that we have. It was supposed to give us... perspective. I got chest pains. And a little hyperventilate-y. We had four options for the stuff. Move. Sell. Donate. Dump.
Where was the Tardis option? I want that option! The option where I can just open the door to a closet and miraculously find 1000 square feet of storage space in it? Where's that option?!?
If someone could actually work out the technology for The Tardis, they'd make gazillions of dollars to downsizing families. Forget cold fusion people, make me a freaking Tardis!
I have a whole 4' x 8' room in our basement that is devoted to Christmas Decorations, a 10' x 10' room for crafts and sewing and another 8' x 8' room that is... who am I kidding here? It's full of crap. It really is. It's got suitcases and old books that were taken off the shelves in the office when were first staging the house for selling three years ago, and furniture that was too big or superfluous. It's a room full of stuff we never use - have NEVER used, not since we moved into this house 8 years ago. Boxes of electronics and old stereos and extra sofa cushions from when we turned our Ikea Ektorp corner sofa into a massive chesterfield. If I were Barbara Eden, I'd wiggle my nose and nod my head and the room would magically deposit its contents to the appropriate corresponding locations: Kijiji purchasers' homes, the Habitat ReStore and the dump.
Two closets and a cubby under the eaves. That's what the new house has. We do have a basement, but it's the basement of a150 year old house - a gravel and dirt floor and a sump pump working overtime. Anything stored down there needs to be off the floor on plastic shelving in Hermetically sealed containers.
And really, other than Christmas decorations, what needs to be stored? The record collection that I've been carting around for decades without a turntable to play them on? The boxes of fabric that I might find a use for, come Halloween 2020? The books that have laid in their boxes for years now, no one to open them, no one to peruse their contents? It's just stuff. And it's not stuff that is bringing us joy. We don't cling to that stuff, soak up its nostalgia and cuddle in its warmth. We store it, just in case. Just in case... what??? No really, just in case what? Just in case we suddenly reside in a mausoleum where these items are displayed as relics of our past? Where they are under-glass memories of days gone by? Where we keep them just to say they're kept and puff up our chests in the knowledge that we hold onto our heritage?
Nope. Not going to happen. No more storing things. No more just-in-casing things. We either use them or they go. Just typing that and a weight has fallen off my shoulders. "They go." Keep what's precious and let go of the rest of it go. No buts, no gasps of near-intention, no hemming or hawing... decide and live with that decision. Let that beat up Elvis album find a place of pride in someone else's home - in the home of someone who plays it on a turntable with all of its skips and analog noise. And you can rest easy in knowing that because you let go - you gave someone else joy.
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