Reclaiming Space

by giving stuff away

photocredit barb miller

When you know you have to move someday, the easy way to handle it is the give stuff away you no longer need.

A good example is the basket of stuffed animals I took to Easter dinner for kids to pick through. They had been stored in large jars to keep the cats from savaging them. Now maybe someone would hug them or play with them. The kids games and building blocks we brought to the last few dinners seemed to go over well.

I never thought of myself as much of a collector except of books, but there is the vinyl record collection to place, the CDs and eventually the DVDs. All these things are available through the Internet if I get desperate for them.

Books are a hard sell even when they are free. I have reduced my library by two thirds, I am down to very specialized war and history books. Still I may be able to place some of them. The books I have written are easier to give away. I have them on memory sticks if I need to recall them.

Plants will just have to die in place. No one wants a mature bougainvillea tree. Clothes will be easy to toss. Most of what’s hanging do not fit or I don’t remember them. When you stop working outside the home your needs come down to jeans, t-shirts and hoodies.

Furniture and dishes can stay or be dumpstered. Photographs can be sorted by who would like them and mailed. The rest should fit in a few albums.

This all sounds so easy on paper, but little bits and pieces of things seem important when I remember who gave them to me. This really applies to Christmas decorations. Last Christmas only the tiny lit ceramic tree made it out of the tubs. And I have 12 tubs of decorations. I have offered to return things to people who made them, and sometime they do not remember giving them to me. Now that’s ironic.