Packing up a house to move to a boat. It’s for real.

Ok so we’ve moved probably 8 or so times in our lives if you count various houses in university. I’ve realized in the last few weeks that moving from house to house is a bit more straightforward. Chuck item in a box, move box to new place, unpack box. Sure sure if you want to get rid of a few things you’ve collected over the years feel free but if time is tight, no need to pressure yourself…besides you can always get rid of it when unpacking in the new place right?!?

Weeeellll so here we are moving a house worth of stuff into a 49’ boat and a 10x15 storage room in our basement. The math doesn’t work. So we have gotten rid of A LOT of stuff. Decisions decisions decisions. Lego? Given away. Clothes? Given away. Books? Given away. Momentos, pictures, kids artwork?? Given away…I kid I kid, those get lovingly jammed in a box, labelled and shelved. I sort of thought we didn’t collect much over the years; I wasn’t wrong either, it still just is a massive job when every single thing you touch has to go through a triage process consisting of: 1) keep and store? 2) keep and take to boat? 3) donate? or 4) throw out? And each of those have sub-decision trees as well. If keep and take to the boat, where will it go? How long will we need it? If donate, where? Do we know someone already that can use this coffee maker, hall mirror, TV, Xbox, Skylanders game, pencil skirt from 2003? You get the idea.

My closet was a piece of work. I am sure many can relate…feeling like you have nothing to wear that really says “me” in the moment you require clothing but then you have a BILLION STUPID SHIRTS that you never wear. Well those are all gone (yay) and layer by layer I was able to see through the fog of crazy and end up with a MUCH more streamlined situation. We’ll see - probably still have waaaay too many pants and sweaters but it’s been a damn cold spring here and I think some part of me can’t really believe that this Canadian girl will ever be hot again.

I’m no Marie Kondo but I’ve really have been on top of the annual purge of stuff…and yet, this job has been dozens of hours already and we have dozens more to go. I am wrestling with the reoccurring nightmare I’ve been having where we proudly downsizing the house and roll up to the boat….and NOTHING FITS. Nightmare.

Until then I will keep triaging…anyone need a bike rack and some snow shovels?

Much love.