Time flies...

Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.

This is such an interesting and odd time in my life. I am winding down at my job and trying to purge our house of anything lacking practical or sentimental value. And while we're at it, let's re-define "value."

I go through our belongings - clothes, toys, books, photos, journals, mementos - and have to judge each item by a handful of criteria:

• Is it useful? (Meaning does it fit/does it work/does it perform a useful task?)
• Do we actually use it or would it be better off with someone who would? (We have many lovely books, but why hoard them when they could be shared?)
• Does it have too much sentimental value to be able to part with it? (The importance of notes from old girlfriends has evaporated by now. Some of our kids' artwork from elementary school can be scanned and saved digitally.)

Everything ends up in one of three piles: 

• Things To Take With Us
• Things To Save For Our Return
• Things To Get Rid Of. 

The basement has one corner devoted to Things To Take and another corner devoted to Things To Save. 

Things To Get Rid Of has several sub-piles, including:

1. Things That Might Have Value On Amazon Or eBay
2. Things To Go To Goodwill
3. Things We Might Put in A Garage Sale Before We Just Bring Them To Recycle North
4. Things We Need To Let The Kids Sort Through 
5. Things To Recycle Or Take To The Dump (which is where most of the things in pile #4 end up!)

Sometimes things are plucked from one of those sub-piles to be rerouted to someone on Freecycle who has made a specific request that we can accommodate. Sub-pile #3 is by far the largest, taking up a good portion of our garage. I guess we've got the "garage" part covered; now we need to get to the "sale." It is the largest, in part, because we keep adding to it, while the other piles are routinely being emptied to some degree.

Too bad I can't sort through the parts of myself that I'd like to bring along or leave behind. I've managed to rid myself of my thyroid before leaving town; too bad I couldn't also exorcise my tendency to criticize or my extra-loud voice. I'm leaving behind my paycheck and my car, but I'd rather abandon 20 pounds and my weakness for chocolate. It's just not as easy as boxing up shoes for Goodwill, feeding all your old bank statements into the shredder, or burning your high school yearbook.

There will be change, no doubt. I just don't know what exactly it will be. And that's part of what makes it all so interesting to think about...