I’m 2,500 miles away from the mainland house, while HA is stuck there doing the second 90% of getting ready for the move and getting the house ready to sell. As she’s been packing things up, she’s run into boxes I’ve stored in the garage and completely forgotten about, or things left under and behind furniture and in other out-of-the-way places.
It seems endless to me, and I’m not the person who has to account for it all. I wasted a lot of money on my last move by transporting many things that I just ended up donating or recycling or landfilling — but that was just a cross-town move. This trans-oceanic undertaking is considerably more expensive, meaning that we have to put a lot of effort into considering the value we’re likely to get out of each thing we move. It is complicated even further by the fact that we have much less interior space in our island place (it’s roughly a third the size), but some things are considerably more expensive to acquire on the island, so a “toss it and buy another” might not be so practical.
HA is amazing and has accomplished more than I ever could have imagined (nor done myself). It’s good, too, that we no longer have the outrageous long-distance telephone rates of yesteryear, as we’ve spent hours on the phone (and exchanging photographs) getting it all sorted out.
—2p