Saturday, Dec 5th - the boxes

For most of 2 days this week, I worked on emptying the attic. We used EVERY SQUARE INCH of this house to hold our American sized furniture and belongings. We only unpacked our most used items. Things like our American electrical appliances (blowdryer, toaster, vacume, etc) were stored in the attic, along with extra clothes, most of our luggage, kids' overflow items (Megan's clothes that Kathryn didn't fit into yet), camping gear, etc.

It was time. The attic items needed to come down. Paul made a GREAT start, but he had to go back to work. I figured I was capable.

So, for the last couple of days, I made AT LEAST 20 trips upstairs, to this little landing,
















and up these stairs into the attic. See the tiny opening?














Big boxes were definitely a challenge to get down.

This whole wall of the attic was filled with boxes that we had saved.














Paul had gently asked me a couple of times over the last 3 years to sort through them. Highly organized with "stuff" I am not. I honestly didn't understand what he wanted. I DID go through the boxes and from my digging, I managed to ascertain that like items were with like items (very important to Paul). We had kids' scrapbooks, extra cook books (I've been using just the same few while here since a lot of ingredients didn't transfer to England), notes and momentos that we had been saving, etc.

Now, faced with the ACTUAL MOVE, I got drastic with the "stuff". One box had a bunch of notes that I had written to my Grandmother. She kept them and left them for me when she died. They were very cute, and I could have spent hours reading them....but I tossed most of them. Why? Because we've been living in cramped quarters for 3 years. Stuff is coming out everywhere. The thought of moving to another house, even if it's bigger, but one without a lot of extra storage, or one that we fill right up with hap hazard old things that we haven't looked at in 3 years just makes me cringe.

The house that we currently hope to buy has more storage than we have now, but doesn't, as far as we know, have an attic for storage. These are attic items - to be looked at when we are 80. Especially if CA isn't our final resting point, I want to be slimmer. I want to have moves be easier. Things that we haven't used or missed in 3 years could be tossed.

I still have the notes - waiting to be thrown. I hate to let them go....but I kept a random few. I had a WHOLE BOX full of them! I kept all pictures, and discovered that we have WAY too many pictures! We have doubles and tons of loose pictures just stuffed in boxes. I'll make a firm effort to take care of those when we are moved in to our new house. NO MORE SENTIMENTAL things - for the most part.

So, after many, many trips to/from the attic, this is the start of how the dining room now looks.














After today (Saturday), the dining room is 1/2 filled and we can't reach the table anymore!

The house is slowly "collapsing".

Items for this week are: finish the inventory - marking and putting a value to EVERY ITEM that we own, including an item as small as a paper clip. After that, I need to go through 5 sets of clothes (Paul will do his own) and set aside what will go with us and what will be shipped. We'll need mostly winter clothes, but CA isn't as cold as IN, so some fall clothes as well.

I keep working through my list....and the kids get a lot of computer and TV time, unfortunately. Thankfully, they are watching Christmas specials that we brought with us, and I try to play a lot of Christmas music.

We're getting there. We do hope that after the 18th, when the movers for the boat have finished packing us up, we will have a little bit of down time to enjoy England. It will still be busy - movers for the air shipment will arrive on the 21st, but maybe we can do one more outing somewhere.

I guess my hope of one last German Christmas market isn't going to be realized. I'm glad we did Munich last year!