HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
Some of you may know that one of our sons built us a new house close to him on acreage in a small (population 280) town in Texas.
We started packing up in June of last year and finished and moved in October. We are just about finished unpacking everything and starting to hang pictures.
Let me recap some of the hazards in moving at an age of over 80+ years. First off, we have been together for 54 years. That’s 108 birthdays between the two of us we have had to buy and celebrate. We went through the ‘bunny’ phase for about 10 or so years. We have bunny rabbits everywhere. Then there is the painted cows season. Then the nativity season. By now you get the idea. Then dial in 54 fathers and mothers days and Christmas or whatever and you realize that you just have too much crap that you don’t need.
I bet the antique stores are having a tough time of it these days as it seems the kids of today don’t want any ‘old’ stuff. We ended up donating most of it to a women’s shelter close to where we lived. I don’t think we have missed anything we gave away. Several of our kids have asked about one or another item and we told them it was gone. Should have said you wanted it. Sorry.
It is not easy moving everything after so many years. The reason you could move when you were 18 or 20 years old is because you didn’t have anything. And what you did have wasn’t worth anything, so a lot of times you just left your stuff and moved out. How many friends and family did you help move from one place to another when you were young? I’m not doing that any longer. Been there done that and sure don’t need another tee shirt. I bet you helped someone paint the entire house or apartment at some time or another, didn’t you? Id rather get a root canal now than pick up a brush and roller again. Painters tape, what’s that? We had to use a piece of cardboard to do the corners or trim work. Or you could just eyeball it and then come back with a razor blade and try to scrape off the excess. It was a primitive process to say the least.
One of the other joys of making this move, which will most likely, be our last is finding lost things that you thought you had lost. My lack of patience over the years in finding something caused me to just buy another one. My loving wife and I have discussed this on many occasions and her method of storing items and mine are different. Therefore, I have multiple copies of various tools, knives etc. it isn’t a bad thing as now I know that I will neve have to buy another Phillips head screwdriver at any point in the remaining years of my life. There is a certain level of comfort to be had from that kind of serenity.
It certainly wasn’t all her fault either, since I have bad habit of taking something I don’t want to lose and hiding it from the place it has been for 10 years. This results in my not remembering where I ‘hid’ it and thus, it became lost until recently.
Finding these lost treasures have produced a number of ‘AH-HA’ moments over the past several months. The challenge now is to keep them somewhere safe so I don’t lose them again.
Life goes on, doesn’t it?
See you next week…
