Getting rid of most of your worldly belongings is extremely easy! Then, difficult. Then… well… The process needs it’s own “it’s complicated” check-box. Doo-hickeys that you haven’t seen in YEARS suddenly become the items you think that you’ll never be able live without. Next week that special treasure will gladly be thrown into the yard sale pile without a second look. I have sat at the kitchen table and thought to myself that feelings for objects are feelings that seem wasted. Then, in moments like just now, I look up at the dining room light fixture and internally scream “MIIINE! Take the clothes and the couches and the giant tv but that fixture is coming with me! SCREW YOU, HOUSE! LIGHT YOURSELF!”

My precious!

Mara is the master of the disconnect. After the first wave of cleaning she got with the program. She has gladly handed over toys and cleaned out drawers with nary a whimper. Wesson, on the other hand, is not a fan of the reckoning. Every scrap of paper, every Hot Wheels car, every bottle cap has a story for him. He sees it as throwing away memories and letting others take little pieces of his soul away. We have caught many tears trying to thin the pile. Can you blame him, though? We’re all a little sensitive these days.

The garage and shed have become akin to the sky over a stormy airport. Our not-so-precious things leave the house and get put outside into a holding pattern, unable to stay but unable to leave, shuffling back and forth, trapped in purgatory as we try to live around them. We’ve filtered through all the boxes that have permanent residence in the garage. You know the ones. They contain your childhood and haven’t been opened since you moved the last time. We have filled many a garbage can. The vast amount of trash that we were just living with makes me think we needed a Hoarders intervention long ago. The yard sale to end all yard sales is coming, just not soon enough.

So. Much. Crap.

The RV should be done in three weeks. I’m hoping that once we get it in the driveway here it will be easier to shed away the things we truly don’t need. The space limitations will finally be real and tangible. To expect to be able to stuff that thing full to it’s brim is not a sustainable thought. Ten pounds of something in a five pound sack, if you catch my drift. We shall keep all the rabbit fur coats and Hot Wheels tracks for now and deal with it later. That light fixture, though… It’s going in the truck.

I’m keeping them both.