Over 30 years in one house
by Laura
(Vermont)
When my grandfather moved to assisted living, he'd been in his house over 40 years.
It was a circus, with family members and others close to him taking stuff out. My brother wanted a desk in the basement. We had to lever letters out of the drawers with a knife; they'd been there since the Depression. Also, the house must have been built over the desk as the basement door had to be removed to get it out!
We've been in our house for 32 years this spring. We, who used to move by loading our car and truck. My husband is a fix-it genius but the corollary to that is that we never get rid of anything because it either might get fixed or might be used to fix something. So on his side, there are drifts of potential usefulness.
I'm guilty of taking what others give me. I wasn't going to take a lot of the things I got from grandfather's house. I got shipped tons of stuff from my father's wife when she decluttered. And I am slow to get rid of clothing because my size changes constantly up and down and my shape is hard to fit. Still, I have way too much stuff.
The pandemic has killed off consignment stores in my area. The nearest one is an hour and twenty minutes away. The clinic doesn't admit anyone to the waiting room where they give away cold weather gear knitted by donors--I'm one. So my knitting is backed up. Sell it? Etsy and I aren't on the same page yet. I took a truckload to the dump. It cost me $5 to dump the construction debris from about 5 projects in the house. There's more in the basement. Lots more.
I do what I can. I throw away stuff, shred paper, wear out clothing and pitch it, hit up my brother to take what he wants of our family stuff.
My husband bought shelves for his tools, organized the wood he thinks he can make into something, and helped me identify stuff that can be pitched. Just keeping up with the boxes from Amazon, carrying supplies we use, is a big chore.
My dream is to pick out just what I can't live without, which is mostly wool and tools to turn it into yarn. Not to mention the yarn LOL.
Sell the house, have a cleanout artist deal with the stuff, and buy a much smaller place. After the wool stuff goes in, buy just enough furnishings to live there, and keep decluttering.
