There's a whole lot of moving going on!

It’s been a moving year so far for our family! This Spring, our daughter and her husband bought their first home. It needed a little work, so there was painting and carpeting and flooring (oh, my!) going on. Some they did themselves, some they got help for. It is lots bigger than the condo they were living in, so they’ve been having fun picking out furniture and filling it up with new favorites. There is lots of space to entertain, so their home has gotten a lot of fun use in the last few months.

We moved into our new home not too long after they moved. However, our new home is MUCH SMALLER than our old one. Seriously, much smaller. Instead of picking our furniture and filling up our new house, we had to do some major downsizing. We thought we had done enough downsizing before the move, but after we moved everything in, we found out we were wrong! We still had way too much stuff to fit in our new home. There is ONE spot for each item we have, and no spots for many of the items we had.

So how does moving into a new home have anything to do with “Holding on to the Memories”? Well, a lot of the things that were downsized were things that held memories. That Duncan Pfyfe drop-leaf table? Held the plants at my parent’s home for most of my life. Then they gave it to me and I refinished it and used it in our (many) homes since then. No room for it in this house, so after consulting with the fam (and finding out no one wanted it or had room for it), it had to go. The secretary that was also from my parent’s home – you know, the one that I doodled on with a bobby pin while I was on a phone call as a teenager – thankfully our older daughter wanted it for their new home, so the memories will continue. Hopefully, if they refinish it, they won’t sand off the doodling. It’s part of its charm! Younger daughter is taking a mirror that was her grandmother’s (and an old torchiere lamp) because she and her husband are also moving this summer! They are also downsizing, but most of their stuff is still too new to them to have a lot of emotional tug, so it’s a little easier for them!

I had to remember that the memories were what was important, and not every piece of stuff. A few of those items stayed out in our garage for a while until I could wrap my head around getting rid of them. And some things I was really sad about. But I’m OK now, because I’m still able to pull up the memories (or go visit the bobby pin doodling at my daughter’s house!) whenever I want. And that’s really the important part, isn’t it?

Until next time,