# 427 - Moving Process - Letting GO!

Getting ready to move with our re-set closing date of May 15th is bringing on heightened stress for moving day. The best thing we can do for ourselves right now is to reduce our household items so that we have less to load into the moving truck, less to haul, less to unload, less to put into storage, less to worry about...having less is best. That means we must LET THINGS GO! Or we must sell them or give them to a worthy family member who appreciates free stuff!

Most every room has been handled except for my oldest daughter's closet which has had boxes stuffed with her belongings for YEARS. I don't have the time or inclination to go through these things because I ALREADY have my "precious" items from her childhood on display. Besides, I believe some of these boxes have part of her college-life inside them, so these are hers to deal with.

My daughters, visiting each other this past weekend.

As for Stefie's things, I'll be storing those for a while because she's still officially a college-student which means a life of residential instability, it comes with the territory of trying to find student-housing each year.

During this process of scaling back and going through closets, drawers, under beds and crevices, I am glad to be doing ourselves this big favor of getting rid of excess. After twenty-six years of marriage and after raising two children who are now grown, we have accumulated excess.

Going through the excess!

Often, the mother is the keeper of things that no one else would ever care to keep or store. So, that is the difficult part...letting go of things that I know had been my right to keep, as the mommy, but that I must now either send to the curb or to the grown kid for their own accumulation dilemma.

Welcome to more FUN parts of being a grown-up!

I elected to keep certain gifts from our daughters, artwork or mementos that deserved a place of honor in the home, for display. However, the other stuff sitting in bulky boxes for years, taking up valuable closet space...uh...that's gotta go.

So, bit by bit, we are gaining ground in the house and reducing our "lots of crap" side of life.

I look around this house and know that my country home won't have all this livable square footage, but it will have the most awesome YARD I've ever seen! Yes, I'm partial and in love with that acreage!

Once we're on the acreage full-time, hopefully after May 15th, we'll also be able to FINALLY have an INCREDIBLE garden. Eventually, I will call a little greenhouse my second home.

In preparation for our moving date in just over three weeks, I sold our master bedroom suit.

It sent a pang of anguish to my bones to sell this beautiful furniture, but it felt good knowing it was going to someone who appreciated its grandness. Last weekend, we watched the furniture go bye-bye as it was loaded, strapped down on a trailer and towed out of sight.

Deputy Dave then decided to get on with re-finishing the hardwood flooring in the master bedroom. Since we have double French doors off the master, it is a high-traffic zone of the house. I go outside into the backyard through those doors to feed the chickens. The dogs come and go through those doors. Therefore, the floors in the master bedroom take a beating.

Also, our Australian Shepherd, Howdy, had loved his secret hiding spot under that big king bed that we just sold and his low-crawl methods found his claws digging into the finish of the wood floor under the bed. Once the furniture was gone, the floor's finish looked horrendous!

I cleaned the floor, scrubbed the floor and mopped it repeatedly. Then, I scrubbed the baseboards and parts of the walls that had been scuffed. Next step...I gave the walls a nice treatment of touch-up paint with left-over wall paint I kept in old plaster water bottles with a glass bauble dropped into the bottom to make shaking and mixing the paint a cinch. After the touch-ups were made to the walls, the room began to look much better. To pull it together, I painted the clean baseboards with a fresh coat of white paint. Ahhhh. Looks great.

But, the best part was to come. Deputy Dave began the tedious process of re-finishing the hardwoods. Cleaning, sanding, cleaning, sanding and finally he put on a fresh coat of polyurethane to give the floors their famous high-gloss appearance.

That said, we won't do high gloss in the country house.

After letting the lacquer dry, I unloaded furniture drawers from upstairs. This is where I basically began lifting things out of drawers and putting them into MORE boxes because everything in those drawers belonged to my oldest daughter. Lift, put into box, lift, put into box...easy peasy. Brainless activity that went fast. Finally, with my favorite light-colored antique furniture free of stuff, I carried each empty drawer down the stairs. Then, Deputy Dave carried the furniture pieces down the stairs, by himself. And I don't know how he does this stuff, but he managed to get our new queen bed-set down the winding stairway, by himself, and we set it up in the master bedroom downstairs.

NO MORE STAIRWAY CLIMBING! The new Queen mattress set FINALLY has a place in our bedroom downstairs!

Now, the master bedroom is without a king-sized bed, it has a queen, and the room is free of large furniture (that I had loved) so the room is looking pretty awesome and spacious.

And I realized that I've never been a furniture "set" kind of person. That didn't work for me. I like the eclectic appearance of things mixed together...modern, antique, country...I like it all. Good, solid pieces is what I am all about. Newer furniture is NOT better, and I can testify to that fact. Our most beautiful furniture are family heirlooms, Goodwill finds, or purchased after searching for quality used furniture that is made of solid wood or crafted with unique style.

However, I am back to the style I had embraced for the first twenty years of our marriage...straight-line simplicity.

 

Now, I just have to get my oldest daughter, who is approximately five months pregnant, to tell me what to do with her dance competition costumes. Since she's having a daughter herself, that might be something she will want to keep for her girl to have in her dress-up box. Those days are right around the corner for her; she won't believe how fast those days will arrive. Soon enough, she'll have her own daughter to dance around, so she might want to keep those costumes for herself to wear again!

So, tonight I am heading to bed in a room that is so free of bulky furniture and clutter. My spirit is rejuvenated!

Tomorrow, I am putting the formal dining room table set up for sale and that will be one more area of freedom and space acquired by letting GO!

Reducing my household belongings means we'll have less upkeep which means will have more times to be with family, such as our outing Saturday evening at a local Cajun restaurant. My dad, my sister and her family, then David and I enjoyed everything from raw to grilled oysters, shrimp po-boys, gumbo and bread pudding. Not bad. And getting to take a break was nice. It's great to be with the ones you really love...