Soon came the daunting task of sorting through 24 years of accumulation to determine what we we were keeping, storing, selling, or donating. If you've lived in the same place for that long, you collect a lot of stuff!! Our house was (for the most part) fairly tidy. We have what we called appendixes of the house. Places where junk accumulated that were mostly unnecessary, but that seemed to rotate around the house. Some times it was a closet, sometimes the garage, sometimes the shed.

What we weren't prepared for was the emotional connection we had to a lot of this stuff. We would go through a box or a room, and it would take a lot out of us just trying to decide. It became apparent that the more we thought about it, the less we felt motivated to go through it. but as the plan accelerated, we realized that we had to get into the headspace to go through a lifetime of accumulation. As we were watching Netflix, I happened to stumble across the Minimalist documentary. We watched both movies that afternoon and that put us in the mindset to address the mountains of stuff.

The main takeaways were that stuff had to bring us Joy, or have a purpose. If it didn't have either, it went in the sell or giveaway pile. Theresa's craft room was probably the hardest part because it brought her face to face with projects that she started but never finished. She had to make the tough decision in the face of wrestling with the thought that something remained undone. The amount of projects that were started, but unfinished was a difficult decision to make, but she was able to take the lessons from the Minimalists and put them into practice during this process.

Once we had gone through all of the stuff we wanted to keep or take with us, we wanted to work with an Estate Seller to get rid of the rest. From what we found out, a lot of them would come in and take care of everything. We deliberately chose a seller that was tied to a charity because it meant a lot to us that our stuff would be able to help other people. We went into this knowing it was not the easy route, but we really had no idea what would ensue.

"Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Turn and face the strange"