Putting it into Practice

Geez....a month to the day since my last post.  An awful lot has happened.  Without getting into detail, there has been a great deal of last minute change, not the least of which involves my relocating to a smaller dwelling.  I sit in my new space as I type, running over the events of the past few weeks.  Interesting is that I have had to put into practice all those words about material possessions I've been writing.  It has been a fascinating exercise to say the least.  I've finally been forced to live by my own words.  That's not a bad thing.

With the recent changes, I decided that perhaps I should write more about my own experiences as they relate to the things I own, or perhaps what I may decide to not own at some indefinite point in the future.

Before the move I had to assess what was coming and what wasn't.  Some of that process centered around the sheer bulk of an item.  Considering that I move a lot of heavy things for a living and often utter expletives while trying to manipulate  non-geometric, unevenly weighted monstrosities down winding stairways and narrow openings, I wasn't about to swear at my own idiocy while grimacing under an object with the approximate mass of a Volkswagen that I happened to own and couldn't leave behind.  That said, I decided I would take no more than 4 or 5 "large" pieces.  The others needed to go.

First out the door to someone else's home was my monolithic grandfather clock.  Although I loved the grand piece, I rarely wound it and actually took great pleasure watching someone else wheezing under its great weight.  In many ways, watching it go was cathartic.  I no longer actively collect clocks and it was time to let a bunch of them go to new homes.  In the end I took five with me, two of which were no larger than a cigar box.  The five would be my remaining connection to my collecting days and all functioned well enough to be wound and used regularly.

As for the furniture...everything needed a purpose.  Nothing could be sentimental or merely decorative.  The heaviest piece chosen was a tall Mission bookcase which could serve a variety of storage purposes since I was would be living in a pre Civil War home that had little storage.  Although heavy, it was narrow and would not have to be manipulated through doors.  To deal with seating, I toted in a European design sofa and a chair and to hold my TV, there would be a need for the low slung cabinet on which it had been sitting.  My office desk was the most irritating of the pieces in that it needed to be disassembled into pieces in order to get it out of my old office.  Every time we thought it would go out the door, a new appendage would jam against a wall or door frame and out would come the screwdriver to amputate it.  Everything else could be moved solo or packed in a box.  This was going to be a minimalist move no matter what.

It was now time to whittle back everything else so that a couple of trips with the pickup would be all that was required to finish the job....more on that later.

I'll MAKE it fit.