Will it never end? Chelsea and I asked ourselves that question daily during January and February – in fact, right through the middle of March. Every time we finished a box, two or three more stepped up to take its place. At times we suspected they multiplied overnight.
It’s not been a matter of disorganization; rather it’s been a testament to our deeply-held desire to get our lives as streamlined as possible, getting ready for seven or more years out of the country. We know that we have no idea what we will be like when we return, much less what kind of lifestyle we’ll want.
Will we continue on doing more cycling adventures? Will we move to some awesome spot we discovered on our trip? One thing’s for sure – our lives will never look like this again. That bit of awareness has been driving all our decisions to keep or move things on, and the longer we are doing this, the more we are choosing to move things on.
I wrote in December about our memorable Christmas Eve move. What I forgot to add back then was that we went back the following Monday for an extended session of clearing out items the former owner of the condo had left behind in her storage rooms. Our customer was quite flustered – he found the moving process very stressful – so he asked us to take everything to the trash when we finished the clearing out.
We finished the day with a long-bed van packed to the ceiling with walkers, a shower/potty chair seat, trash, trash, and more trash, and a queen-size memory foam bed, complete with wooden frame. So there we were, desperately tired from so much work and downsizing, and we added all that bulk to our lives!
The trash part was easy – next day was our trash pick-up, but we couldn’t throw out the beautiful walkers and shower chair, and our customer wanted us to sell the memory foam bed for him, giving him the proceeds.
We had no room in the house of any kind, so the walkers went on the back porch, but the bed was a thousand dollar item new…no way could we store it on the porch! After sitting for a day or so with the bed still in the van, we came up with the idea of storing it on Alex’s air hockey table in our living room. As if things weren’t crowded enough, now we had a queen-size bed in our living room…sigh…
While the blanket-covered memory foam bed rested comfortably on the air hockey table (providing a deliciously soft bed for the cats), we kept working on the pile of boxes and furniture in Chelsea’s former room, very motivated by the fact that we had a new roommate arriving in mid February, and knowing we needed to get the room cleared well before in order to paint and clean.
We sold a number of things on Craigslist pretty quickly. The walkers went first, one locally and another to a wonderful woman is California. She has multiple sclerosis and had been using the same walker till it finally gave up the ghost. She’d been looking for a replacement, but that particular walker is no longer made; she wanted the same one.
She was delighted to find it; we were delighted to have it going to a good home. Getting the walker taken down for shipping and getting it boxed up in a reasonably sized box was a true challenge – it took us a full night to hand-create a box that would be small enough to not cost a fortune to mail but sturdy enough to survive the postal service.
We sold two items on eBay – they both went in the first round, so that meant more trips to the post office, as well as the time to list the items and follow the auctions.
At long last we had a garage sale – it took forever to decide what should go. It’s a lot of work to have a garage sale! There are the decisions on what should go; getting things clean and ready to be shown; making sure to have light bulbs in the lamps and an electrical outlet for the electrical items; figuring out how to display everything and getting it all set up; figuring out how to price things; advertising the sale; having enough change on hand; having enough people to watch all the tables; negotiating the prices (that’s the worst part for me); then cleaning up everything that doesn’t sell and putting everything away.
Our garage sale day dawned clear and crisp and windy, so we had a good turnout. Our neighbor Ivar, bless his heart and soul, had a sale the same day. About 7:30 a.m. he showed up on our driveway with two garage sale signs, pounded them in quickly, and rode away to mind his own sale.
Our success was due in large part to one woman who bought most of what we actually sold. She spoke very little English, but we managed to figure everything out – she certainly was fluent in her numbers, so we got along fine.
We’d already agreed to FreeCycle everything that didn’t move at the garage sale. We’re glad we did, but oh dear heaven, what a job it was! We posted at least eight items in one day, figuring that we’d grit our teeth and just get it over with.
Much to our amazement, the items were extremely popular – I answered well over one hundred emails within 24 hours, with responses still trickling in over the next few weeks. As if that wasn’t bad enough, we then had to make arrangements for all the folks to actually pick up the items. We had a revolving door for almost a week.
I can’t forget our postings on crazyguyonabike.com – we posted fourteen items; gradually over a few months we’ve sold at least nine of them. Each sale meant another job of packing things up and heading off to the post office.
Meanwhile, during the Craigslist, eBay, garage sale, and FreeCycle sagas, we went through all our clothes and a number of other boxes to see what else we wanted to move along.
It’s a huge relief to report that we are FINALLY finished with the vast bulk of our downsizing. We still have a few open boxes; we still have some last minute things that will need to be boxed; and we still need to figure out how to box up some odd sized smaller furniture pieces.
Every box is taped tightly and labeled clearly; we have photos of the contents of each box; and we have a master spreadsheet with every box listed, along with its measurements, total cubic inches, and where it is (we’ve got boxes stacked in six locations around the house).
The process has been emotional and thought-provoking. We’ve looked over the last two dozen (and more) years of our lives in great depth, evaluating each part of it, putting many things to rest, letting other things go, and feeling joyful about what’s remaining.
We’re on a long journey, literally and figuratively, and it’s been very freeing to so thoughtfully choose what will come with us for the next part of our lives. Though it’s been a hot, tiring, cranky, often exhausting process, we have the clarity, sense of freedom, and joy that come from such a profound new beginning.
Bring it on, world! We’re ready!
A final postscript: after sitting on the air hockey table for nearly three months, having survived several rounds of unsuccessful Craigslist postings, Alex finally decided he’d take the bed from us for his girlfriend Amanda. She loves it. The cats miss it.