Leaving the House

I had about 30 hats in my closet, and I would rarely wear any of them. There were maybe 3 or 4 that I would pull out when I wanted or needed a hat, but the rest just sat there. Most of them are now at Goodwill, with about six boxed away in the basement. I chose one hat I would bring with me at the start of our trip. It's not like this is the only hat I will have for the following year. This one will probably wear out quickly, and I will replace it. Moving out of our house has brought me through this thought process repeatedly with so many things.

It is so different to live in your own house at the same time that you're both moving out of it and preparing it for rental. Most of our things were put away and replaced with new, matching, not chipped or well-worn items. It felt a bit like we were living in our own Airbnb. We were able to keep a locked storage room where almost everything we wanted to keep would be. The rest is given away, and what is left is either thrown away or coming with us.

Our approach was to comb through the house from top to bottom over and over until there was nothing left. It took a lot of time, but I think it worked, as we did not have a mad dash at the end where we were stuffing things into a closet or bringing unnecessary things.

The morning of the 8th, we woke up around 4 am to pack the last items into our bags and leave the house. We had two minor hiccups as we went. The car was not nearly big enough for our family of 5 and our baggage, so we had to order another and split up. Our sprinkler system was running because we were leaving so early in the morning. We noticed three separate leaks in the drip lines were spraying water into the sky. We will have to get someone to fix that while we are gone.