Getting rid of all the "Stuff"

In the course of 33 years, a couple of people can accumulate a lot of stuff junk treasures.  I remember when we moved into that new and bigger house 15 years ago and we were sure we would never fill it all up.  But we were living the American dream, and we managed to fill it to the maximum!  Our master bedroom suite was bigger than the entire apartment we lived in when we were first married.  One day I realized that I had 26 drawers in the master bedroom suite--and every one of them was full!  When you have 3 other bedrooms, 3 living rooms, and an oversized garage, you have to do some serious down-sizing to get down to the space constraints of a 35-foot motorhome.

But we have been planning for this exodus from home ownership to motorhoming for some time.  So we have purposefully not replaced any furniture or household decor for several years.  To show how committed I was to this dream, I even stopped buying dishes and kitchen gadgets!  Knowing the size of RV closets I even slowed down on buying shoes!  I then started a strategy of cleaning out every drawer, cabinet and closet in the house.  One year ago, I whittled down to only the things I knew we would use in the next year.  We had a huge garage sale.  To avoid having to price things individually, we sold every item for 50 cents.  There were some real bargains that day!

Large furniture items are harder to part with.  Our sons are still mobile and not interested in much furniture.  But they did finally agree to take a few things off our hands.  

After contemplating Craigslist and classified ads, we decided to just give things away.  So we took pictures of everything and asked our brothers and sisters if they wanted anything.  A few more treasures found new homes.
 

  





 
Our nieces and nephews were just starting their households.  So one nephew and his wife picked up the loveseat with recliners; 
another nephew and his wife were expecting another child and needed bedroom furniture for their son; another nephew and his wife had twin babies and got the trundle bed; another niece needed barstools. . . 

We noticed that the house started to echo as it grew emptier and emptier.  I mentioned that I was really disappointed in our neighbors.  They continually saw people pulling up to our house, loading furniture and then leaving.  And not one neighbor reported it to the police!