My in-laws recently bought 50 acres of bare land near Walla Walla, Washington, and are moving there in a few weeks. Having lived in the same house with a large garage and multiple outbuildings for the past 30 years, they have accumulated a bunch of "stuff." While they get a house onto the land, they will be living in an apartment. Today was spent moving the larger furniture to storage and attempting to sort the rest into "don’t need until we’re in the house" and "gotta have in the apartment" piles. What fun!
Even though we moved less than two years ago, it’s easy to forget the pain trying to decide between packing our junk (guaranteeing we’d never never need it) and throwing it out (guaranteeing we would). We erred on the side of keeping too much and have some still-sealed boxes in the garage. Other stuff we moved seems fairly useless. After all, how many times will I need to refer to my notes, assignments, and tests from college (collated by class and date in separate folders) if I haven’t needed them in the past 21 years? In the meantime, I’ve continued my pack rat ways.
With spring officially here, I think it’s time to take advantage of curbside recycling and clean out some junk.