Getting a house ready to sell is physically and emotionally exhausting.

House selling Dave and I have worked non-stop,  twelve hour days, cleaning, painting, and clearing out since we returned from picking up Bella-BOW.

I really had no idea we’d accumulated so much stuff in the last 17 years, and I’ve been a little shocked and embarrassed at the things I’ve found in the back of the drawers, in cabinets, and closets.

For example:

I’m not sure you can see the dates, but these are seeds packed for years long past, 2014, 2003 and one I must have brought from another house because it is stamped “packed for 1995”.

If I could insert that shocked face emoticon here, I would.

There were telephone books in my desk drawer from 2012 and innumerable things that should have been thrown away years ago.

And so I’ve been forced to face an ugly truth about myself;

I’m a drawer-ditcher, a stuff-shover, a careless-cleaner.

I’ve used the excuse “I might need that, ” and put whatever it was in a drawer, cabinet or closet, never to see the light of day again.  I might have been hurriedly cleaning for company, shoving things out of sight into the nearest hidey-hole, thinking at the time I’d move it “after the guests leave.”

“After the guests leave” came to mean ‘when hell freezes over, or we sell the house, whichever comes first.’

The decision to sell the house and live full time in Bella-BOW has forced our hand.  We can’t keep everything.

Donation Dave has made numerous trips to the Salvation Army and Dump Dave has been active too.  We’ve even rented a storage unit for those things we ” really might need” if we ever decide to buy or build again.

The first and second floor of the house are done, but we have yet to tackle the basement.

* insert theme from JAWS here and imagine it whenever you read the words the basement*

The basement is a deep, dark scary sea of stored stuff.

In the last seventeen years the question “What should I do with this?” has always been answered by the words “Take it to the basement.”

The basement is where all the big things “we might need” were sent to live. It holds furniture, toys, books, seasonal decor, our luggage, and “things the kids might want” ( I’m betting they don’t).

There are two of us, where did we think we might go?

Ho, Ho, Ho, that’s a lot of Christmas Crap

The stairs to the basement reveal an additional ugly truth; we are…BASEMENT BLOATERS.  I think this must be one level shy of a hoarder, but inching up the ladder in that direction.

It’s too bad TLC doesn’t have a show for that.

A photographer is coming to do the listing photos on Sunday, but there won’t be any of the basement.  So on Monday morning we’ll put on our work gloves, cloak ourselves in ruthlessness and head down those stairs.

It will be a struggle to sort through the boxes of memories and I hope I don’t end up with a pile of things I can’t part with because I’ll probably bring them upstairs and shove them all into the nearest clean drawer, cabinet or closet.

Old habits die hard no matter how much we want or need to change.

And who knows, we might need those things someday.