How I'm celebrating Easter.

[MineralMan]

A few months ago, my wife's mother moved out of her twin-home condo and into an assisted living facility. She's having a great time in her new digs, but it's not inexpensive. So, today, tomorrow and Tuesday, My wife and I, along with her sister from Florida will be finally clearing out 86 years of accumulated miscellany from the condo as a major step in preparing it to go on the market. A crew with trucks and strong backs is coming in to take it all away on Tuesday, to be distributed according to its nature.

We've already sorted the stuff into piles of boxes and gigantic black plastic bags, There are piles destined for the landfill and piles to be donated to a thrift store, along with piles that will go to recycling and into a storage place to be "looked at later." We all know that the stuff probably will never be looked at again, but it's important to my M-i-L that it be available for inspection and more sorting.

This evening, we're all going to a family-owed bar and grill for Easter dinner. We'll be tired, but we'll have made some progress.

All of this has me looking at my own home. Sometime this summer, we're going to get a dumpster dropped off and I'm going to repeat the process to clear away the detritus and worthless stuff that has accumulated here. My wife and I have no children, and I'm pushing 70 this year. We're going to clear away a bunch of stuff.

Time passes. With that passage comes the need to scale back on possessions. It's not always a happy thing, but it's a needful thing. My wife's mother is a little nervous about all this, but is enjoying her new lifestyle and her new friends and a more care-free way of living. She's OK with all this, which is a good, good thing. She'll be there tomorrow to make final decisions about some stuff, but won't be there for the actual hauling-off day. That's probably a very good thing.

[ChazII]

1. You are good son-in-law.

Yes, de-cluttering, sorting and packing can be an emotional draining task. You're doing a great job from what you have posted. May you have a peaceful Easter.

Blessed are those who help organize, sort and donate for they shall have....... a clean house? less stress??
I will leave the one liners to the more talented writers here at DU.

[MineralMan]

2. I refer to myself as the "dutiful son-in-law."

That always gets a chuckle. I do what's needful cheerfully and whenever needed.

[ChazII]

4. Sounds good

and I can see how folks would get a chuckle.

[chillfactor]

3. What a marvelous family you are....

working together to help your mother-in-law....you deserve your night out!

I am 73. i recently moved and I threw out all kinds of junk and debris....some of it was sad to do so I understand how your mother-in-law feels but why have family go through all of that junk when I am gone....I kept things everyone can use and probably have a hassle over.

[MineralMan]

5. My own parents are both 90 years old.

They live in California, with my two siblings living in the same town. My wife and I moved to Minnesota because her parents didn't have anyone responsible living nearby. Her father died a year later and we've been here for her mom. This aging thing isn't wonderful, and I know that I'll have to deal with my own parents' passing sooner than later. It's no fun, but it's important. We visit my parents a couple of times a year, and I talk to them every day by telephone.

It's all a process, this living business. We all must do what we must do and live up to our responsibilities. The way I look at it is that our parents spent 18-20 years taking care of us. The least we can do is be there for them as they age. It's a pretty simple thing, really. That's the way we were raised.

[Jenoch]

6. I hope all of your efforts go well for you and

the rest today.

My britgers and I are lucky. Our father is a packrat, though not as bad as he used to be. A little more han 25 years ago our parents moved from the huge house in which we grew up andxthey had a household auction. They subsequently moved two more times and reduced the tonnage each time. My oldest brother's in-laws were worse packrats than our father. They lived in the same house for almost 60 years. It took at least ten weekends to clear out that house.

[MineralMan]

8. We're hiring an outfit that handles the clearing out.

The whole thing will cost a couple of thousand dollars. I'm too old now to do all the heavy lifting and back work needed. Once the condo is cleared out, painters and flooring people will come in and freshen the place up and it'll go on the market. The expenses will come out of the selling price. Since the place is free and clear, the rest will help pay to keep my wife's mom living comfortably, along with her retirement funds and an excellent pension from her late husband.

The pre-sorting we've done will simplify the entire process, but there will still be decisions to be made as the crew works. There will be three of us on-hand to make those decisions. The company that's doing the work says the place will be emptied in one day, and I believe them. This is what they do, and they have a great reputation.

I'm a packrat myself. Fortunately, when we moved here from California, we got rid of tons of stuff, literally. There's nothing like a move to help you decide what you really need and what can go. To make the move, we bought a used 24' moving truck from U-Haul. I spent about a month loading it, very carefully and compactly. When we left, it was full from front to back and top to bottom and was within 400 lb. of being at its max vehicle weight. We drove it and one car from CA to MN. We didn't have a house picked out here, so we just parked the truck at a storage yard until we bought a place, then drove it over and hired a moving crew to unload it and move everything into our new house. Then, I sold the truck on eBay to someone else who was moving. It was an adventure in many ways. We stayed with her parents for the month it took to close on our house in MN.

Life is interesting.

[MineralMan]

10. Sounds like a good plan.

[NYC_SKP]

9. I can relate, between parents passing and my own need to downsize but where to begin?

The parents' belongings part wasn't so hard as they'd given away a great deal and a great deal was stolen by the hired help.

Still, it wasn't easy deciding what to do with a lot of memories. We hired an estate sale outfit that made it somewhat easier.

Now I need to downsize to 460 SF plus a little storage room from my current 1000 SF home plus 440 SF shop and 440 SF garage, and the 460 condo is already nicely furnished.

I want to sell the high value items with photo ads on craigslist in a one-day sale, give a lot of other things away to science teachers who can use them, donate much of the rest.

And then bring in an estate sale group to clear out the rest after I've identified the 1/10 of shit that I plan to keep.

Downsizing is good, and I miss the days when I could fit everything I owned in the bed of an F250.

[MineralMan]

11. I, too, remember being able to move with all my possessions

packed into a 1959 Volvo sedan. That was long ago. It's never easy, and we do tend to accumulate stuff over time. We're going to clear away pretty drastically this Summer. We'll probably be amazed at how much space we actually have again. I tend to be brutal in making decisions for downsizing. I've never regretted any of those decisions.

We'll probably have a huge garage sale at some point, with the dumpster still on the property. That way, after the garage sale, we can just move all the unsold stuff directly into the dumpster. I'll carry it out of the house and garage, but I refuse to carry any of it back in. That's my garage sale strategy, along with accepting any offer on any item. The goal is to get rid of stuff. We'll probably realize about $1000 from the sale, if history repeats itself, which will more than pay for the fees for the drop-off dumpster. That's good enough for me.

[2naSalit]

12. Sounds like

a good plan. I did that about ten years ago when I opted for moving to the mountainside from town... had a large yards - two of them actually - all my possessions fit in my vehicle in two trips now. Getting rid of "stuff" was very liberating, I had antique furniture and too many dishes and things I spent more time worrying about how to store and protect. Now I don't have those worries and it feels so liberating. If it's just stuff, get rid of it, if it's something of value but you don't use it, sell it to someone who will use or needs it before it becomes worthless. I will admit that the sentimentality of some items was a hard barrier and I did cry at the point of letting go of some things, I just told myself that there was going to be no gain if no pain to get through it. Once I got to my current yet spartan digs, my world became much happier.

It's a good thing to purge oneself of "stuff" that ends up cluttering up one's world an consumes their thoughts. It's just stuff, there are far more valuable yet intrinsic things in life upon which to focus one's attention.