Clutter

As part of this adventure, we’ve taken on a very important task to rid ourselves of clutter (aka junk). Since we are moving halfway around the world, transferring stuff from here to there (and back again) is not a reality. So we embarked upon our “period of enlightenment”; where we turn our back upon the materialistic nature of the human animal and become more in tune with living like the creatures of the forest. Okay, not really anything that idealistic or granola. It’s more of a forced march through the jungle of junk, the landscape of landfill, the waterfall of waste….you get the idea. We’re forced to look at all of our “stuff” and place everything into categories; keep, junk or Goodwill (or perhaps a 4th category, “what is this?”). We started by renting a construction bin and doing a cleansing of the house of all of the “easy decision” stuff. It was go up into the storage area over the garage and start looking at the boxes, bins, etc. A lot of the internal conversations seemed to end with the same basic question…..what the ____ did we keep this for? I mean we had empty boxes of stuff we bought (including shoe boxes) just in case we might need to return it? How about a large box full of cassette tapes that we had not listened to in perhaps 15 years or longer. Imagine how good those tapes would sound after sitting an attic through the Georgia summer heat for all of those years. We found this kind of stuff everywhere and carried it out to the bin. Bent tomato cages…in the bin, old table…in the bin, broken glasses….in the bin. We disassembled furniture (you know the high quality furniture that comes in a box being held together by adding more glue and screws each time it fell apart) and tossed it. We also gave a lot away to friends and neighbors, and to Goodwill. I think towards the end of the year, Tammy was making 2-3 trips per day to get rid of stuff not only from the attic but from all over the house. We must’ve had 40 different coffee cups, it was crazy (those darned kids…hooked on Starbucks). Basically we looked through all of what we had accumulated in our time in the house. For 14 years, we just built up stuff some needed, some not. At the end of the month of renting the bin, we had trashed nearly 2 tons of stuff (now our neighbors did dump some stuff so let’s just call it 1.5 tons just so we don’t look like we have any kind of disorder). 1.5 tons……..think about that, that’s what we threw away. The question becomes, did we need it in the first place? Some stuff, yes but once the kids outgrew their things (like the carseats), we should’ve gotten rid of those but instead they went into the attic. It’s easy now to look back and know that we weren’t thinking when we kept a lot of stuff.

So, Phase I – The Bin was a huge success in getting things out and clearing space. Once we cleared space we took photos of the house with the fresh paint, the new carpet and the clear countertops. We took some time to enjoy that success but then it’s on to Phase II – The Legend of the Bin. We went back through the stuff we kept and took a second look and found yet more stuff to fit into the 3 categories of stuff. Phase I was hard but Phase II is harder on the kids since they have a difficult time sorting through their stuff and thinking, in 2 years will I really want the Captain Underpants books (Captain Underpants….get it at your local Barnes & Noble). I’ve moved several times in my life and moving from one state to the next usually doesn’t result in a reduction of stuff, it’s just a transfer of stuff so this was all new even for me. For all of the Lean geeks out their, it’s a simple 5S exercise but it is kicked up a notch due to the timeline involved (and it’s YOUR stuff and not the company’s stuff). It’s a tough sell for us to think of storing stuff for 2 years, what do you keep and what do you get rid of? Take a walk through your attic, garage, crawlspace sometime and see what you’ve accumulated, I’ll be you’ll be surprised.

I’ll be leaving next week and have moved into Phase III – Stuff the Suitcase. I’ve got to determine what I am going to take with me and how I can fit as much as possible into 2 suitcases and keep under the weight restrictions from Delta for baggage. Clothes, toiletries, some food (okay a lot of food) and some household stuff will all be packed as tightly as possible to make it fit. I’m sure I can find whatever I need there so I’m trying not to over-analyze but it’s tough. Every time I walk through a store I find something that might come in handy but can I fit it into my suitcase? I mean, I still need to be able to pull the suitcase through the airport (do they have a battery powered suitcase?). It’s going to be tough and take several dry runs but it’ll get done because it has to be done. I just hope the suitcase can handle the strain.