Hi all. Steph here. Gene is at the lake helping a friend do some renovations on a new lake house, so this post is all me!
I’ll start by making a long story short: one of us in this relationship is a keeper and one is not. I mean “keeper” in the sense of holding on to things because they have value, cost a pretty penny, or may be needed in the future.
That person is not me. And that person was gone all weekend.
Side note: in Gene’s defense, he has gotten WAY better over the last 6 months as we’ve worked through this process. But he does still say to me, at least weekly, “You know, we still have to live here for the next two years.” Honestly, if it were up to me, the top and bottom floors of this house would already be empty. We’re compromising.
When the kids were little and would go away to a friend’s house or out with Nana or Gene, I would sometimes take the opportunity to clean their room for them while they were gone. Upon their return, they were thrilled to see their clean room with the miles of clear floor space and neatly arranged toys and stuffed animals. They did not see, and therefore did not miss, the bags of toys, trash, and broken bits that made their way to the thrift store or the recycling bin. Out of sight was, literally, out of mind.
With the house (mostly) to myself this weekend, I saw the opportunity to remove bags of stuff (both figurative and literal) from pretty much every closet and drawer on the main floor of our house. I had cleaned out the basement closets and upstairs attics and closets a few weeks ago, so the main floor was the last man standing.
I started with the kitchen junk drawer and, I’ll admit, there is still more “junk” in that drawer that I am comfortable with, but it is an improvement. Then I moved on to the drawers in the entertainment center, the closet under the stairs (our “Harry Potter” closet), and the office closet.
The office closet was the hardest. It had slowly become the catch all for “stuff” and cleaning it out took the better part of a day. But as you can see in the before and after pictures, it is practically empty now!
The hardest part of cleaning out the closets wasn’t the physical act of emptying them. That was actually the easiest part. The tough part was deciding what to do with everything. Each item had to be evaluated. First, do we keep it. If so, where? If not, do we sell it or donate it? If we donate it, do we take it to the thrift store drop off or list it on the local Buy Nothing group?
For the “do we keep it” question, mostly the answer was no, as you can see by the empty closets and drawers. I also decided to sell very few things because, quite honestly, the listing of items, messaging with potential buyers, getting ghosted by buyers, and meeting up to exchange items for money is EXHAUSTING. So right now, the back of the Subaru is loaded up with items to go to the thrift store drop off. As tempting as it is to drop it all off tomorrow morning, I will wait until Gene gets home and give him a chance to save anything from the pile. This is what separates the adults from the pre-schoolers.
I also gave our local Buy Nothing group a workout this weekend. To get a handle on the sheer volume of stuff, I grouped like items together and gave them away as a lot (craft supplies, office supplies, etc.).
I also use that group to give away things that have sentimental meaning, so I know they are going to a good home. Years (decades?) ago, I made a quilt top out of fabric that I absolutely loved. It moved from closet to closet over the years, always with the idea that I would one day make it into a quilt. This weekend I accepted that I was not going to finish it and, even if I did, what would I do with it when we moved? So, it went to someone in the Buy Nothing group who promised to send me a picture of the finished quilt. Knowing that it is going to someone who loved the pattern and will finish it so it can be used and enjoyed softened the blow of letting it go.
And there are some things that, honestly, should have left the house this weekend that are still here. You may notice in the “after” photo of the closet under the stairs, my doctoral robe is hanging with the winter coats. I paid an obscene amount of money for this when I graduated because I was planning a future in academia and would have to wear it twice a year for convocation and graduation. That future did not come to pass and now the only thing that robe is good for is a Halloween costume.
I could have added it to the thrift store drop off pile, but I know how Gene feels about this item. Just in case, I snapped a picture and texted it to him with a question mark. I got a one-word reply – “no.” We will not be taking my doctoral robe to the Caribbean, so we will have to have this conversation again in two years, but for now, I’ll let him have this one.
I fully expect that something left the house this weekend that Gene would have chosen to keep, if only for a few more years. In fact, probably several somethings. But in my defense, I did tell him my plans for the weekend, and he still left me unsupervised. And in the end, it’s just stuff.
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