Spring is in the Air
I love spring! Seriously, when the temperature gets above 45 degrees, I have my windows open to air out the house. Can you tell we lived in Alaska? But spring also means another thing in this military gypsy life: PCSing!
It always sneaks up on us, leaving us to ask, “Wait, didn’t I just get here? It’s too soon, right? How am I going to get all my valuables onto the truck and stay within our weight limit?”
Cue the spring cleaning fairy. Oh wait, there isn’t one. When will the military start providing that service? They seriously need to get a contract with Marie Kondo.
Are you a hoarder? Perhaps you’re a minimalist at heart but a hoarder in real life. Don’t be ashamed, I am the same way. I don’t necessarily hoard everything. No, no, I hoard only certain things (that makes it better, right?). My number one hoarding problem is craft supplies. I love them! The shinier and cheaper, the better. But before our most recent PCS, I realized that I had a problem.
I mean, four-storage-bins-overflowing kind of problem. And when do I ever have time to craft when I live with two juvenile roommates and my husband is away doing his Army thing? Basically never.
So it was time to clean out. I started by setting a goal—an attainable goal. I wanted to get everything into two storage bins and not have to sit on the lid to close them. I sorted everything into a keep pile, a donation pile, and a “to be determined” pile. Keep items were things like fancy scissors, pretty papers, and card stock (side note: check to see if your installation has a thrift store. Many times the proceeds from the thrift store go back into the military community).
My next hoarding problem is with Christmas decorations. I’m one of those cheesy, must-decorate-every-inch kind of people. But when you live in a new house every few years, all those decorations don’t fit. It’s like that pile of curtains and rods from every house. So to the donation pile they went. Again, I started with the goal of getting the chaos contained in four bins. Yeah, yeah—four bins still seems excessive, but I basically cut the amount in half. Why do I admit these things? And as our favorite family motto says “We’re not aiming for perfection, but a good, solid 75%!”
Finally, my last secret hoarding obsession is children’s books. My kids love books. I am not even exaggerating when I say that we probably have 1,000 or more books, and we have read every. Single. One.
This is a sentimental attachment for me. I think of every time I sat in the rocking chair reading those books to my two wiggly boys. But…books are heavy. Like, really heavy. Do you remember carrying all your textbooks in high school? And we wonder why our backs go bad too early in life…
Anyway, I again started with an attainable goal. I wanted to get rid of 10 books. I looked for ones that were basically falling apart. Bye-bye Brown Bear, Brown Bear, my oldest has memorized you anyway! See you later, two extra copies of Goodnight Moon—we can only find the mouse in the room so many times. When all was said and done, I had gotten rid of more than 10 books! My youngest picked some out, but I completed my task.
Don’t think this is going to get done in one day. It will likely take multiple days. It will take multiple conversations with your spouse of justifying why you still need particular items.
They. Just. Don’t. Understand.
Organizing is a daunting task, but here’s the thing: every bit donated or tossed is progress.
Make small attainable goals. If “small” for you is backing up a dump truck to your front door, then by all means, go for it. But if it means getting rid of five things, that’s good too.
If you have severe attachments to your Great Grandmother’s super fragile china, I’m sorry, but the movers will break it. I like to imagine it’s their motto. Something along the lines of, “We will take more days than necessary to pack up houses. We will break random sentimental objects due to poor packing skills. This is the creed of military movers.”
Maybe that’s going too far…
Perhaps just gift those things to another family member for a few years, just in case. Whatever it means for you, then do it. Because when all is said and done, we can’t take it with us when we leave Earth, am I right?
