{"id":3216,"date":"2021-03-09T08:47:18","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T13:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/?p=3216"},"modified":"2021-03-09T08:47:30","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T13:47:30","slug":"too-much-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/09\/too-much-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Much Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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<\/div>\n\n\n\n

This photo was taken on a walk my husband and I took last week. That is all pretty normal; we take a lot of walks. However, this walk was a little different. This walk was in Ohio and we live in Connecticut. Or, we have lived in Connecticut. In a couple of short months we are moving to northeast Ohio. This is a good thing. We are all very pleased about the move. My husband and I spent a slightly frantic ten days in the midwest trying to find a house to buy and then settling for an apartment for the time being. We visited a lot of cities, wandered through a lot of neighborhoods, and sanitized our hands approximately ten million times. We came home, told our kids all about it and took a deep breath of relief. We had found somewhere to live. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then reality set in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to move all our stuff–too much stuff–618 miles across the country. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have lived in this house for twelve years which is the longest we have lived anywhere in our lives together. We have always moved every few years which has guaranteed a proper clean out of all the accumulation of the previous years. Twelve years in one place has given us way too much time to fill up the black hole that is the attic. Did the kids get tired of something? Throw it in the attic. Don’t know where to store something? Throw it in the attic. Are you too fond of something to get rid of it but you don’t use it anymore? There is an attic for that. Do you buy too many books? (Who could that be referring to?) Stack the boxes in the attic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now it is time to deal with the attic and I am not having fun. Well, I am not having fun when I am actually being useful and practical but I am having fun when I am being sidetracked by things like my high school yearbook and my kids’ baby photos. But the practical decisions are so hard and I seem able to be sentimental about the strangest things. My dad says if I haven’t looked at it in five years then I probably don’t need to keep it and I know he is probably right but I also know that as soon as I get rid of something I am going to regret it or need it. Our new place won’t have as much storage so some things have to go but what if I have grandchildren some day and I need a blanket to wrap them in, toys for them to play with, and books to read to them? What if that coat comes back in style? Maybe one day I will refinish that dresser. That big mirror is very pretty. I know I haven’t hung it on a wall in a dozen years but really, it is very nice. Maybe one day…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a problem and it is too much stuff. It isn’t the big things that are so much the problem. We are leaving half our furniture behind and I am fine with that. It is all the little things, the memories and the sentimental things, that I have trouble making decisions about. That dresser I mentioned that needs to be refinished belonged to my grandmother. The big mirror was a gift from my other grandmother. How do you decide what to keep and what to…convince your sister to take? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A move of 618 miles might be the only way to solve it. Ruthlessness is necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we all know there really isn’t such a thing as too many books, right? The books* can come to Ohio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*I feel like I should mention that I bought a few** books when I was in Ohio. Yes, I have a problem. However, in my defense, I was having a bad day because every place we looked at was awful and my husband insisted I needed to go to a bookstore to make me feel better. He was right; it worked. But now I have some books I bought in Ohio, brought home to Connecticut, and will have to move back to Ohio. But, hey, what’s a few more books at this point? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**Eleven. I think it was eleven. I am kind of afraid to look. Most of them only cost a dollar, if that helps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This photo was taken on a walk my husband and I took last week. That is all pretty normal; we take a lot of walks. However, this walk was a little different. This walk was in Ohio and we live in Connecticut. Or, we have lived in Connecticut. In a couple of short months we are moving to northeast Ohio. This is a good thing. We are all very pleased about the move. My husband and I spent a slightly frantic ten days in the midwest trying to find a house to buy and then settling for an apartment for the time being. We visited a lot of cities, wandered through a lot of neighborhoods, and sanitized our hands approximately ten million times. We came home, told our kids all about it and took a deep breath of relief. We had found somewhere to live. Then reality set in. We have to move all our stuff–too much stuff–618 miles across the country. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. We have lived in this house for twelve years which is the longest we have lived anywhere in our lives together. We have always moved every few years which has guaranteed a proper clean out of all the accumulation of the previous years. Twelve years in one place has given us way too much time to fill up the black hole that is the attic. Did the kids get tired of something? Throw it in the attic. Don’t know where to store something? Throw it in the attic. Are you too fond of something to get rid of it but you don’t use it anymore? There is an attic for that. Do you buy too many books? (Who could that be referring to?) Stack the boxes in the attic. Now it is time to deal with the attic and I am not having fun. Well, I am not having fun when I am actually being useful and practical but I am having fun when I am being sidetracked by things like my high school yearbook and my kids’ baby photos. But the practical decisions are so hard and I seem able to be sentimental about the strangest things. My dad says if I haven’t looked at it in five years then I probably don’t need to keep it and I know he is probably right but I also know that as soon as I get rid of something I am going to regret it or need it. Our new place won’t have as much storage so some things have to go but what if I have grandchildren some day and I need a blanket to wrap them in, toys for them to play with, and books to read to them? What if that coat comes back in style? Maybe one day I will refinish that dresser. That big mirror is very pretty. I know I haven’t hung it on a wall in a dozen years but really, it is very nice. Maybe one day… I have a problem and it is too much stuff. It isn’t the big things that are so much the problem. We are leaving half our furniture behind and I am fine with that. It is all the little things, the memories and the sentimental things, that I have trouble making decisions about. That dresser I mentioned that needs to be refinished belonged to my grandmother. The big mirror was a gift from my other grandmother. How do you decide what to keep and what to…convince your sister to take? A move of 618 miles might be the only way to solve it. Ruthlessness is necessary. But we all know there really isn’t such a thing as too many books, right? The books* can come to Ohio. *I feel like I should mention that I bought a few** books when I was in Ohio. Yes, I have a problem. However, in my defense, I was having a bad day because every place we looked at was awful and my husband insisted I needed to go to a bookstore to make me feel better. He was right; it worked. But now I have some books I bought in Ohio, brought home to Connecticut, and will have to move back to Ohio. But, hey, what’s a few more books at this point? **Eleven. I think it was eleven. I am kind of afraid to look. Most of them only cost a dollar, if that helps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-lately"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3216"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3223,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3216\/revisions\/3223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}