Late at night in a soon-to-be-empty house
Actually, it was early in the morning.
The night before the closing I was up till 6:30 AM doing all the last-minute clearing away of the detritus of my life, getting things ready for the walk-through at 8:30 AM. I just barely avoided the nightmare of scooting out the back door as the new owners came in the front.
What took all this time? Loading my car to the brim with clothes and other personal must-have-with-you items. Then clearing away scraps of paper, empty shoe boxes, an inordinate number of plastic bags, crooked wire hangers, old half-empty plastic spray bottles of products bought to clean soap scum or mildew or rot or rust, sticks and stacks of things to cover up scratches or stains or stinks. Rags and torn towels and an old Betamax, maple seed wings that had somehow gotten tracked throughout the entire house, color-coded stickers for a filing system I never got around to instituting, extension cords galore and…well, you get the idea. And then, a clean sweep.
A few things I’ve learned:
(1) It turns out that when you’ve put all your furniture in storage and are cleaning up afterwards, there’s no comfy place to sit or lie down when you get tired. You can always lean against a wall, but it’s not quite the same.
(2) Usually when you’re cleaning up in a hurry, there are closets to shove items into—not to mention sweeping things under the rug (not literally, of course). But when there are no rugs any more, and the idea is to empty the closets, even what looks like odds and ends when spread throughout the house becomes quite a pile when gathered together. And a small Toyota does not hold quite a pile of goods, let me tell you.
(3) In the end, everything becomes garbage. The odd objects I hadn’t been quite sure about, the Christmas cactus and the slightly underachieving toaster oven and the plastic baskets for laundry—out, out, I say! Garbage all.
But, in the end, this is also what the new owners get—a clean slate on which to write their lives (compare to photos of previous stages):
And they were probably doing the same in their turn. And after you’ll find your new house, you’ll get to start anew, too.
A chain reaction of clean slates.
Best of luck with this next stage of your life. I can’t remember if you’ve given any hints about where you will be settling in….whether it involves any dramatic changes. Selfishly, I hope your blogging remains as frequent.
Your experience reminds me of what occurred to my parents. Their house went on sale and sold very rapidly, leaving them scrambling to find new property. Now, they are still unpacking after a frantic move to Wisconsin. Actually, a close friend and another close friend’s parents recently moved as well. I’m not looking forward to the expiration of my lease, but fortunately it is distant..
testing
As we are fast approaching the 2 year mark in this house… the memories of the move are still not far enough away.
This weekend I’m cleaning out one single closet (where I shoved so many odds and ends during the move in) and it’s going to take me the entire 3 day weekend to fix it up as I want it to be! I still have too much stuff even after pitching so much. Yes, in the end much becomes expendable, but you’ll be surprised again when you find a new place at how much you brought with you that should have been pitched before hauling it. Ah well.
Moving out is much harder than moving in. At least on the move in – you’ll have somewhere to sit and rest for a moment. 🙂
We live outside the US. My mom’s big ole family house was “our” house when we were in the States. She died over two years ago and we were the ones left with the job of cleaning it out- saving vs. selling it vs. throwing it out. It was excruciatingly painful. We had the saved stuff, including a lot of furniture, in storage for two years. Last month we bought a house in a small town in the Hill country of Texas, and moved the all-but-forgotten furniture and boxes in. One of the best things was unpacking, and discovering wonderful things we did not get rid of. Everything has a memory, a story, a piece of our lives. Some of it, I am sure will be in our childrens’ houses and will be passsed on to our future grandchildren. Just stuff.
These guys seem comfortable without furniture:
http://tinyurl.com/343eyl
Neo, your post strikes very close to home for me.
Last year my wife and I realized that we could no longer do all the chores associated with maintaining a big hous and yard. Particularly a yard on a very steep hillside. It had been a joy to live there overlooking the Stuart Straits and Whidbey Island. We had labored long and hard developing the landscape, which I jokingly named the “Hanging Gardens of Camano.” But we age. Joints weaken, muscles become less fit. Eventually we find ourselves exhausted by work that was easily handled a few years earlier.
So we agreed…….time to move on to a smaller house on level ground. We found the house, which was just in the planning stages, and made a commitment. Then we turned ourselves to the task of readying our house for sale.
All things considered it went pretty well. We began by selling, giving to charity, and throwing away a huge amount of “stuff” because our new home would be much smaller and have much less storage than the old homestead. I kept telling my wife we were doing a favor for our daughter, saving her the task of getting rid of the “stuff” when we pass on.
The sale was a bit of a cliffhangar. As the closing date for our new house loomed only 35 days away, buyers suddenly appeared. The deal was consumated and we began packing.
The move occurred on 8/23 & 8/24. Now we’ve been ten days in the new house. We can sleep, cook, do laundry, and get our car in the garage. But we still have way too much “stuff” to fit into the new abode. A couple more months of selling, giving away and throwing away may get us to a place where we fit.
The feel, rhythm, and flow of the new house are all different and strange. We have moments when we wonder if this was the thing to do. Then we remind ourselves of why we did it. All in all it’s a well built, well located, home, which will serve us well as we enter our twilight years. And our daughter will have much less “stuff” to deal with when the time comes.
I prefer storing things in garages, not closets.