Hit the Road Jack (Part 2)

After a brief interlude communing with the Queen, it is time to return to the trauma of moving. I have not yet reached the point of catharsis. I want to rid my psyche of the angst which was my constant companion for four months. (I have tried primal scream therapy, usually while watching the Phillies, but it just doesn’t cut it). So on to phase two.

Once we made the decision to move, we were hit over the head with the realization that we had too much stuff. Our friendly neighborhood realtor spent two minutes complementing us on our house, before making clear that we had to get rid of at least a third of what we owned before we could even think of showing it to any prospective buyer. There was a whiff of condescension that led me to wonder how we ever had the boldness to let anyone into our home.

Looking with new minimalist eyes, I began to wonder whether I had thrown out anything over the last 26 years. I remember taking the trash cans to the curb every week, but were they empty? Did I just throw our accumulated detritus into the garage? How else can you explain my inability to walk from one side of a two-car garage to the other without taking a detour outside?

Frankly, if it was just rubbish it would not be a problem. Pile it up and toss it!!!! However, as I started to tunnel through the rubble, I realized that it wouldn’t be that simple. Could I admit that my softball days were over and give away my equipment? I know that I pulled two hamstrings last time I tried to play, but what if I find a senior’s league that will let me walk around the bases? Aren’t we going to need that ice bucket we used three or four times in the last 20 years? Decisions, decisions.

Of course, that was the easy stuff. After a moment of misplaced nostalgia, I realized that I was unlikely to ever swing a bat again. If caution is thrown to the wind, and I do play, someone else will have a bat I can use (my hamstrings ache just thinking about it). And who uses ice buckets anymore anyway?

After concluding that 90% of the garage was expendable, I waded into the house itself. I immediately realized that we had been living in clutter for years. There were odd pieces of furniture that we took for granted, that did nothing more than take up space. There were holiday decorations stuffed in closets. There was shelf after shelf of pre-school art projects, 3^rd grade report cards, class pictures (ten copies each), faded college souvenirs and mementos from trips I can hardly remember. I realized that I had to go room by room, closet by closet, nook by nook, cranny by cranny (can a cranny exist without a nook?). I told myself that I had to be willing to purge. I told myself that I had to be ruthless. And then I had to admit that I am nothing more than a softie.  

That admission was freeing. I didn’t have to toss the Scottie dog ashtray my father had in his office (heaven knows why), or the back issues of my underground tuba newspaper, or the Sunshine Award given to one son in his only year of football (granted, not an award that evokes hard-nosed gridiron play). I just had to sort and organize these treasures. Oh, joy!!!!

Going through the accumulation of 26 years opened doors to a flood of memories. Most of them good, some not so. I would find myself sitting in the middle of a room surrounded by postcards, random pictures and assorted souvenirs for hours on end. At some point I had to say enough was enough and put things into boxes for later ruminating.

And then there were the books. Hundreds of them piled on bookshelves in almost every room. I love books. The thought of disposing of these old friends was almost unthinkable. Yet I knew that many of these books had to go. Not out of a Marie Kondo conviction that books are useless clutter, but out of a (in retrospect misplaced) notion that the books would not fit in our new place. With every box that went to Green Drop a little bit of me died (I know that’s hyperbole of the grossest kind, but if Kondo can hate on books, I can revere them).  

Slowly, but surely, we uncluttered, or so I thought. What I came to realize is that it’s never enough. The prevailing wisdom is that people want to project themselves in a house, so no evidence of the current owners should be seen. No pictures. No mementos. As little on walls as possible. In other words, sterility.

I just don’t get it. Who wants to live in a sterile home? Don’t people want to see evidence of life? Don’t they want to see how others made this box a home, even if their choices would be different? I know that I do, but then maybe I just don’t have enough imagination to put myself into a blank space. So round 2 (or was it 3, or 4) of the clean-up commenced.

Finally, it is time to put out the For Sale sign, and I will leave things there, for now. I can’t say the angst has been eradicated, but I do feel better. And that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? Isn’t it?