We’re entering the most chaotic week of downsizing and moving – our final week in the house! You’d never believe which weird items we’re finding it hard to part with, and which ones are surprisingly easy to let go.

We spent the weekend dividing stuff into five piles: thrift store, dump, boat, family, and sell.

Boat – anything that we’ve decided is worth bringing aboard. We’re trying to keep this to a minimum but it’s hard!

Sell – I’ve been listing all the large items on Facebook Marketplace, which is equally great and incredibly frustrating. On one hand, most things have moved pretty quickly so that’s made downsizing much easier. On the other hand, we’re selling a lot of items so we’re coordinating meetups with a bunch of random people, a few no-shows and suddenly we’ve wasted a lot of time. There are some items that we absolutely have to sell because we have no way of moving them, like the couch and the mattress.

Dump – I hate bringing anything to the dump, but we don’t have good options for recycling some things like scrap wood. It brings me almost physical pain to contribute to a landfill but our time is so limited and the easy way out is just. so. easy.

Family – we’re hoping we can talk some family into visiting us soon, and once they get here we’re going to ask very nicely that they help us out with a few boxes of things we can’t take with us…but just can’t get rid of yet. Weirdly, I feel like I need to keep all my canning stuff. I love gardening, and I think the canning jars are that connection to gardening that I can keep, even though I won’t be able to can anything for years. It’s dumb, I know jars are too cheap to justify storage but some of these were inherited from my grandma, and food preservation has been one of those social family events that I’m really going to miss.

Thrift store – pretty much anything that doesn’t sell, but isn’t worth dumping is going to the ReStore.

It’s been strangely easy to get rid of some things that I really loved, like the majority of my winemaking supplies. It’s ridiculously hard to get rid of anything that we received as a gift, even if the item is obviously not going to make it aboard the boat and there’s no point in keeping it (such as the cast iron cookware).

Our typical night goes like this:

We get home from a long day of work around 5pm. I’ve scheduled three people to come and pick up the fake leather ottoman that everyone thinks is real leather because apparently no one on Facebook knows what “faux” leather is, the side tables that we bought from IKEA for $16 four years ago and are now selling for $25, and my favorite ultra-comfortable upholstered chairs that we pulled from a dumpster and are now selling for $60. While waiting for people to show, we pack up as much as we possibly can into the bus and then Kyle takes it away to the ReStore, while I stay home to meet buyers. Over an hour later, Kyle comes home and asks how the sales went. “Well, I haven’t heard from the first person at all. The second person said they hurt their back today and can they stop by tomorrow night and oh would we take a quarter of the asking price? The third person stopped by to look at the chairs but he can’t pay for them until his girlfriend gets paid on Friday.” So I just wasted my night for no reason. Now that we’re on the verge of exhaustion, we throw some chicken and frozen veggies in a pan to make a quick, no-frills stirfry. We realize we’ve brought all the dishes to the boat. I thought I left enough utensils to eat dinner, but we’re eating on paper plates, I let Kyle use the spoon we found and I’m eating with the paring knife until Kyle finishes his dinner then I get the spoon. We just sold the mattress last night so we definitely have to go back to the boat to sleep.

Sad and pathetic, we fill up the car with stuff and drive out to the boat. We fill up our dock carts and realize that we can’t bring it all out in one trip. I’m nearly in tears because I’m so tired and I just want to lay down and Kyle says “I think I can fit this all in one cart, you only need to make one trip then I’ll come back for the rest of this stuff.” He’s my hero in like ten different ways because it’s a half mile walk from the car to the boat and when you have to make that walk with a heavy cartload and your muscles are already protesting the day’s work…the prospect of an extra cartload is a big deal. We load everything onto the boat, I collapse on the couch, too tired to even pour myself a glass of wine. Kyle makes a last trip out to the car, we go to bed and fall into a deep sleep, knowing tomorrow will be even harder because we haven’t touched the garage yet and it’s going to be brutal.

Because we’re total masochists, we also invited friends over for dinner this week – they’ve been extremely helpful and we wanted to show our gratitude. The dinner was BYO chair, because we literally don’t own any, but other than that it was great! We had a little bonfire and tried to burn some of that scrap wood but quickly realized there was no way we’d make it through that pile in one night.

I feel like a broken record, but this would be a thousand times easier if we didn’t have full time jobs. We’re downsizing and moving and we’re doing it all between the hours of 5-11pm. This weekend is our final weekend in the house and then we turn the key in to the landlord on Monday. I’m not sure we’re going to make it!