Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Walking Away is Not Always Letting Go

I started a massive clean out of my house in preparation for selling the old hag. I am sure at some point, decades ago, she was a beautiful young girl of a home. Like all of us who chose not to get plastic surgery, or more accurate, could not afford plastic surgery, her roof is a little saggy, the doors and windows don't open like they used to and floor boards are not fitting properly any longer.

Like any other person in the world, I want something better. I mean, I am hitting my back nine and is this really the last place I want to see as I take my final breath. Ah, no way man.

So my brain starts clicking. I can get social security early if I chose a place that is more affordable to live and with my small, very small, retirement check, I can get a smaller, newer gal to move into that I simply love!!

Great plan but there are a million and one steps inbetween the make my head spin.

First is getting rid of decades of crap that have somehow found a home in, well, my home! Why in the world did I get all this "stuff"?? I don't all this stuff, I don't use all this stuff and I certainly have no where to store all this stuff.

It's only logical that I box it and bag it then donate it, since I hate yard sales. My first load was quite an achievement. At least 15 bags and 10 boxes of crap I didn't need and was ready to offer to a charity to help someone who surely could use the mountains of cloths I have not worn in years, the book I read years ago and holiday decorations that had been long replaced with shiny new ones.

I loaded as much as I could into the back of my HHR (a long story how I went from my double cab pick up to the little HHR). It was piled so high I couldn't see out the rearview mirror but that was okay, having driven a pickup that towed a little RV I was used to using the side mirrors more than the over head center one anyway.

That was alover 2 months ago and guess what..... I am still driving around with my crap in the back of my HHR. What is wrong with me?? I have more to load at home, more to pack up and I can't seem to drive to Goodwill or Salvation Army? They both have a circle that is has someone who unloads the bags and boxes, it couldn't be easier. That just leaves one answer. I am having trouble letting go of my "stuff", much like the Steve Martin moive when they go bandrupt and his wife says, "I don't mind losing all the money. I don't want to lose all the stuff."

Okay, I have to suck it up because I want to move to the gulf coast and I am not going to get there with all that clutter. Something in me in refusing to let go. A film crew was at my home last October (another story) and asked if I thought I was becomming a horder and why did I hold onto so many things. It popped out of my mouth before I could even think about what I was saying on film. "I think I hang onto to so many things because I have lose so much in my life." In the year since I have thought, hanging onto these things has not brought back one single thing I lost in the past, it really is time to let go.

1 comment:

  1. I am feeling this one! About a year and a half ago I made a huge move from the lower 48 to Alaska. My daughter and her husband helped me move, so all three of us had to fit in the Sentra that we drove up here and whatever space was left over in the trunk held the only stuff I could move with. Not much at all. I hate yard sales, as well, and donating stuff is so much easier! BUT...before I left I got a storage unit where I put some things I just could not bring myself to get rid of. It's like a grave I go to visit when I travel back once or twice a year.

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