A Pocket Full of Marbles

Yesterday, our real estate agent Brandon told me he would like to start showing the house, off-list, in a couple of weeks. This sent me into a frenzy of tidy up and toss. It’s stunning how many little piles or containers of ‘stuff’ there are around a house with a family of four who aren’t really very tidy to begin with…

At one point, I found myself wandering around the house with a pocket full of marbles and a hand full of lego bits, completely at a loss for where the containers were for either one. Having finally tracked those down, it occurred to me that by the time I have this place organized enough to show, I’m also going to have it pretty well organized to move. Two birds and all that. However, the getting there may tax my sanity.

Brandon tells me that you should only have one thing on each counter. Close your eyes and imagine your kitchen, your bathroom, your living room coffee table. Right. No real family ,who actually lives in their home, only has one thing on a counter. I worked it down in the kitchen to mostly one thing on every four feet of counter and called it a night. I was pooped.

The other thing that is happening in this process is that I’m deciding what is going to England and what is going elsewhere. Elsewhere will either be garage sales, friends, charity, trash. We’re having the first of (hopefully only) two garage sales this weekend. Electronics are somewhat useless in an oversees move, as the current and plugs are different. We can get transformers for some and swap power supplies for others, but mostly we’ll just be leaving a lot of the little things behind and some of the big ones for that matter. We won’t take the toaster oven, waffle maker, electric tea kettle, or the yogurt maker. Their too inexpensive to replace and carrying them over would be more trouble and money than they’re worth. We will take the stand mixer, food processor and blender. They cost more and I can probably get one transformer and a plug strip and keep them all on the same counter. This is how the reasoning goes.

Then there’s everything else. Do you really want to take that whatsit? How often do you use it? Will there be room for it in the new house? Do you have another that’s really a lot like it? How many sets of plates does a family need/want? How about tea mugs (many in our family)? What about mason jars? I do a lot of canning in the summers. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get them as readily over there. Priorities become a little round about and strange here. What about the cookie cutters?

This too shall pass and we’ll be that much lighter before we go. I’ll try hard to be honest with myself while not being too sneaky with the children. Some of their stuff will go and they won’t miss it but I won’t tell them we’re selling it either.

Tomorrow…carpets and paint and ‘why didn’t we do this when we moved in?’.

:)k