7 days from now we will be in our new place! Well...we think anyway. Our landlord...Bob? John? Nooo....whats-his-face??...Oh right, BILL! Bill said he'll more than likely be starting the turning over on Monday and as long as there isn't any BIG MASSIVE horrible mess in there, which there shouldn't be...the girl looked fairly tidy, we should be moving in on Saturday! YAY!!!
We still aren't done downsizing our crap. Most of my shit is done. I have a few more boxes to go through that i need help to get to as there are big nasty black widows out in the shop. I'm not kidding either! I have pics to prove it!! But the rest is done. It's either repacked, downsized, ready for donating, tossed in the trash or into the burn barrel out back. Brooks on the other hand...he's slow. He's a procrastinator and a bit of a pack rat. Not a good combo. Yet, it's a combo we both share. Sadly i am the same way. I'll put crap off until the very last minute a lot of times because i just dread doing it. But we really don't have that ability this time.
Tomorrow will be it though as far as time he'll have this week to get it done, so it may be ugly, but at least his stuff will be finished. I made him get rid of ONE of the George Foreman grills he had and his little toaster, as mine is pretty bad-ass and black and stainless...not white. It was like pulling teeth to get him to toss out anything! I wasn't hovering over him or anything, but just trying to get him to down size SOMETHING!!! We gotta take most of our crap with us and i really REALLY don't want to move a box of crap we're just gonna toss out. That makes no sense and I've done that for the last 5 years. DONE!! Not to mention, when we moved him from the beach in November, i was the one packing stuff as the guys moved stuff out, and at one point, i was just tossing crap in a box. It didn't matter that there was an entire box of socks that he never wore (a box he had never unpacked when he moved down there mind you), or a box of t-shirts and coffee cups and office supplies. We were in a hurry, so i did what i could with what little time and few boxes we had.
So a week or so ago we hit his stuff. I wanted to rip my own hair out. Literally every box he opened he found stuff to talk about in it. He narated the box. It went something like this....
Brooks: Oh wow! Honey look at this! I haven't see this (insert some old thing here) in forever! Check it out!
Me: Uh hu. Cool! (i was packing up art supplies)
Brooks: No, you're not looking! LOOK!!! I got this when i was (insert random age of childhood here)
Me: I see honey. Very nice. (still packing stuff...)
Brooks: LOOK!!!!!
Me: I am looking...are you keeping it? (I never stopped working...)
Brooks: Ummm....i dunno. Maybe.....hmmm......
Me: Ok, well keep going then. Think on it. (Grabbed another box, kept packing...)
Brooks, upon digging into another box: HONEY!! OMG!! Check it out! Omg, look at this shirt!!
Me: Yes, i see that. Cool.
Brooks: (Insert story of shirt here).
Me: Uh hu. (finished packing my art stuff, moved on to cleaning his donation stuff)
Brooks: Yea...i guess i'm gonna toss these. I don't need them and clearly never wear them, and hey...did i ever tell you when i got this shirt.....(insert rest of long story about a shirt here).
I wanted to rip my hair out! It was like watching a little kid clean his room. Every box had some old thing in it that had a meaningful and deep story attached to it. While i do understand that people have memories and stories regarding stuff...(believe me, i am one of those people!) we are on a very tight timeline. We don't have time for him to explain to me about where and who the whatever it is came from. We don't have the time!! Plus, every time he talked about something and told a story...he pretty much stopped working. Talk and work, talk and work, talk and work.....
The next day i went out to the shop to work on more of my stuff. He was at the burn barrel near where i was working. In fact, he had a view of me working away. I had an hour until i had to go inside and start cleaning (i had a tight schedule that day). In an hour, i showed him 2 things (mostly because one was a pair of diamond earrings i thought I'd lost a long time ago, at the bottom of a box of shit i almost tossed in the trash!), and downsized 10+ boxes, had 3 more boxes of donations, tossed a massive bag and a giant box of trash out, and hauled 3 boxes of crap to burn. I was impressed with myself!! That was in an hour!!
He keeps thinking that he's all done. Just because you can't see a box of crap to go through, doesn't mean it's fine to leave alone. And now we have to find his birth certificate on top of downsizing stuff...so I'll help him look for that. His mom says i should just do it. It might be better. However, i know how i would feel if he was going through my stuff and tossed something i wanted to keep. So I'm not doing it. I keep telling him...it's a two way street. We both have to give up some stuff and get rid of stuff in this move. It's fair. I'm not gonna toss out all my crap and him give up a damn toaster. Which reminds me, he looked like a kid saying goodbye to a beloved pet when i suggested we use my toaster instead. He said, in a pitiful Eeyore voice, "But...but it's a good toaster". "Yes honey, I'm sure it's a great toaster! But if our kitchen is gonna be orange and blue (i hear scoffing as y'all read this! They're really pretty together, as blue and orange are complimentary colors thank you very much!) and black...wouldn't the black one be better to keep?" He turned away and went back to narrating the next box of stuff.
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