Moving is traumatic and stressful. Over Christmas vacation week (we both took the week off),we spent every day at Tom's parents' house, helping them pack, clean out and prepare to move south. In today's blog you'll learn about our adventurous week... BUT I also I hope today's blog inspires you to take a look around your house and either donate extra things you have to homeless or battered women's shelters or Goodwill. Toss out old papers, shred all tax returns older than 7 years. Donate books to book drops. If you haven't worn something in a year, donate it. If you have hundreds of plastic food storage containers, recycle some. Do it now. Don't wait. I've mentioned in my paranormal blogs that a tidy house emits more positive energy. If you have stuffed animals, wash them and donate them. Here's the adventure>>>>
Tom's folks have been in a townhouse for over 25 years, and over that amount of time, you accumulate stuff. Most of the time, you don't realize how much you have, or even what you have! So, when his folks made the final decision to move to an assisted living facility in the Carolinas, we were the only ones around to help with the cleaning, organization, and packing. Every day for 6 days we were at the house, and we brought our dogs Tyler and Dash (who looked for places to lay down).
When you're in your 80s, many things hold memories. Then again, some of them don't and those need to go. When you move from a three floor townhome into a 2 bedroom apartment, you need to seriously downsize. The emotional impact of that is HUGE and it's not only stressful for the people moving, but the people trying to convince the movees they need to take less stuff. I spent 2 1/2 hours bubble wrapping a huge set of dishes. I spent another 2 1/2 hours bubble wrapping little porcelain cows on a kitchen display, and about 100 tiny glass animal ornaments, all to ship south.
(Photo right: 5 Bubble wrapped tubes of over 100 tiny porcelain animals I wrapped)
We filled about 20-25 trash bags, and made about 5 runs to Goodwill. Yesterday you read the blog about how we played local Santa's Elves by distributing lots of my mother-in-laws stuffed animals to people who had nothing for Christmas, and we donated a big bag of them to a woman who runs a shelter for battered women (some who come into shelters with children).
With the big move happening in a couple of weeks, we're still working at it. Regardless, the purpose of this blog is to urge YOU to donate, clean out, toss out and reduce things in your home. If you don't look at them in a year, consider giving hem to someone who can use them or appreciate them.
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