The last time I spent in the company of The Divine Sarah (and her hubby, shuddup you dirty-minded sods) was when she lived in her Colorado house. It was a lovely place, and I have to confess I did feel the occasional pang of envy.
Her new place? Apparently, not so lovely.
Of course, what hurt Sarah was that she moved the entirety of her old house’s contents into (I assume) a house of similar dimensions, and she and Dan brought everything with them. That, I could have told her, was always going to be a mistake, because a rule of thumb when moving is that you always repeat always de-clutter before the move.
When New Wife and I moved a couple years back, it helped that we were losing a bedroom (and its closets and its bathroom), so we had to get rid of an unconscionable number of things that we decided we were never going to need again. (Sarah talks of a couple SUVs of stuff headed to Goodwill: that’s beginner activity where I come from.)
What’s interesting is that of course I had to de-clutter bigly, back after Connie died and I had to empty our enormous Plano house (seven 30′ dumpsters… how’s that for clutter?) so I could remodel and sell the place.
And New Wife and I moved into an apartment, she bringing only a couple of suitcases-worth of her stuff from Seffrica, and I bringing only the remnants of the stuff I’d kept from the old house (less than a quarter of a single-car garage’s worth). And we still managed to accumulate possessions during our time in that apartment so that when we last moved, there were many trips made to Goodwill etc.
I might as well have been in the Army for all the moves I’ve made in my lifetime — the biggest one being from Seffrica to the Land Of The Free in The Great Wetback Episode of ’86 (three suitcases, from a huge townhouse in Johannesburg), and the next biggest was the aforementioned one from the Plano house.
Obviously, in terms of stuff let go, the Seffrican move caused the most: stereo set, a thousand or so albums, furniture, 400 bottles of wine — what the hell was I thinking? — clothing, a garage-full of tools and two cars. (Now that I think of it, even the relinquished clothing was ridiculous: a dozen suits, a dozen pairs of shoes, two dozen dress shirts… oy, it hurts my brain just to think about it. And by the way, all the clothing still fitted me, so it wasn’t even that any were particularly old or threadbare.)
Recently though, I’ve learned to be absolutely ruthless in paring back stuff. It helps that we have an apartment that cannot contain anything more than what we have, so whenever we see something we’d like to buy for the house, the first question is always what we’ll have to toss out — new stuff is replacement, not additional. This includes clothing, even.
Anyway, let me just give y’all an example of what I’m talking about. This is our breakfast nook/dining room:
And no, it wasn’t posed or set up, but completely impromptu: I was lying on the living-room couch and thought it would make an interesting still-life pic. (That’s why the side pieces of art aren’t hanging symmetrically, sue me. They are now, though.)
In Comments, feel free to share the details of your most wrenching move. Or just tell me what caused you the most anguish to let go…