Manuel Labor for Labor Day Weekend

A three day weekend for most, would mean stretching every second into a jam packed fun filled three days and saying goodbye to summer right before welcoming in fall. I mean, that is what you do right? ahem....not around here.

This year for us, that meant three days off work and three days to actually work at packing and sorting and purging this house. You guys, fair warning....I have not blogged in a while, but will be doing so again most likely. This is a good place to write my feelings on this journey and maybe one day, I might want to read about this again, after the pain I am feeling from moving heavy things subsides a little. sigh.

Day one began at 6:00 am yesterday, yes bright and early. The plan was to get our shed cleaned out totally. If you could only imagine what that actually meant. Boxes upon boxes upon boxes and then lets just throw in a few more boxes for good measure. I felt I had to go through every thing.....every last thing.

Yes, this is my house and my junk! 

The morning started off rather well. I had one side of the driveway for keep things, the other side was for sell things and I sat every thing else I was not sure about on the trailer. Progress was being made. Then, mid-morning, Steve and I reached the holiday decor boxes. The first three I pulled out was the Halloween boxes. Now, mind you, I have not decorated for Halloween at my house since my youngest went off to college in 2005....TEN YEARS for crying out loud.

I opened the boxes and truly saw years and years and years of beloved things I used to decorate with when the kids were small. I have a HUGE and I mean HUGE collection of Halloween Chicken Mcnuggets that we sat out every year. They were a must to keep, at least I was not willing to part with those things. But for the most part, I kept a small pumpkin with a cat that lights up and a couple of other things just for sentimental reasons and the rest, I tossed in the sell side of the yard.

As I was battling with myself on what to keep and what not to keep, I did actually make the comment to my husband that I felt sorta guilty. When he asked why? I said, because Alisha, (my daughter) will be upset if she finds out I got rid of all this stuff. Steve said she won't remember this stuff and besides, we don't want to store it. Well, I thought to myself, you might be right about us not wanting to store this stuff, but I can guarantee you, she will remember and thus the reason for my guilt. As we opened the next boxes, Steve pulled out a cardboard pumpkin that had long orange plastic strings that hang down from the base of the pumpkin. The pumpkin was designed to hang from the ceiling. I used to have two of these, but one must have gotten damaged along the way. This said pumpkin could not have cost me over a dollar back twenty-five years ago, and we always hung it in the same place, by our kitchen table. Memories cast aside, the pumpkin was tossed in the sell pile as well, and we moved on past the Halloween decor and onto the next pile of boxes. Progress. It. Felt. Good.

The pumpkin man, which was saved!

About an hour later, guess who calls? Right...Alisha. Apparently, she asked her dad what we were doing. Well, and truthful as dads should be, he told her what we were doing. First words out of her mouth were we had better not be getting rid of all of her memories. I heard Steve say, we aren't, just junk.  I am willing to bet she asked what junk because I heard Steve say Halloween and Christmas. Then I heard nothing on Steve's end of the conversation.

After a few minutes, Steve walked up and said, "you are not going to believe this." I seriously thought, oh, I bet I will. He shook his head and kept saying, I don't believe this, I really don't.......He then proceeds to tell me that Alisha asked if we found the Halloween pumpkin with the orange strings. The same cheap, barely costing a dollar piece of cardboard and plastic that hung from the ceiling of our house for three weeks out of the year, every year. I did not ask him what he actually told her, but he handed me the phone and said I better call her while he walked over to the tossed..... ahem....... memories and fished out the pumpkin from the box. To make a long story short, most all the tossed Halloween was boxed up and repacked to be moved to the new house. Yep, it sure was and it all sits on the keep side of the driveway.

When we got to the Christmas boxes, I saved myself a lot of time and told him to put them all on the keep side. He looked at me and said, "What.....are you kidding?" I asked him if he wanted to make the phone call to his daughter or not. He silently,  put the boxes on the keep side and we kept right on going with what we had to do.

By days end, we could hardly move, but all the keep boxes were lined up on the driveway, and there was not that much really at all in that pile of stuff. All the sell stuff was put back into the empty, clean shed which filled up rather quickly, so we purged so much stuff. I was so surprised by how easily I let go of so much of the stuff that was in there to begin with. I will admit, I ran into some things that proved to be more of a struggle at making a decision, but in the end, about 80 percent of the time, those things went into the sell side of the yard.

Day two is today. We have to get all those keep boxes into storage and we have some stuff to sort and toss that has been stored at his dads garage. I would really like to try and get two more rooms inside the house sorted as well. Lots to do....and we are dog tired. I am feeling so much lighter, but I am weighed down by the sore muscles and bones. It is a J-O-B and believe me, I feel every bit of it today.

When I found myself with a inner battle on deciding if I should keep something or not, I tried to take myself into that new house and visualize how I  would use it or where I would use it or if I would use it. If I could not answer any of those three things, it was tossed.

This move will prove to be the best thing that has every happened to us. I can feel that in my bones and all the stuff we have tossed and are walking away from will certainly lighten the loads in our hearts and minds. We are both so excited!

Day two...here I come!