Movin' on up?

My husband and I have been married 12 wonderful years. In that time we've accumulated three beautiful children, one dog, two frogs, and a whole lot of stuff. Stuff that could (and did) fill a 3,000-square foot home. Stuff like computer monitors that we're too cheap to pay the $30 for someone to come in and properly dispose of. Don't worry, we don't sneak them into the local landfill or anything. We just move them from house to house. Seriously, we do. I have two clunky computer monitors gathering dust in my basement right now.

Stuff like burp cloths and boppy pillows, Barbie dolls, and bouncy seats (and I'm just on the B's). Don't even get me started on the three-foot tall trophy we've moved not once, not twice, but FIVE times since we married that hot July day oh so many years ago. Five times. That trophy probably didn't even cost five bucks to construct, yet there it is (right next to the computer monitors) reminding my husband of the day he beat out a handful of other elementary school kids in the state super shooter contest. I digress. What I'm really here to talk about is stuff and how we epically failed to get rid of it.

I had great plans really. I was going to cut our belongings in half. After all, we were going from a 3,000-square-foot home to one that measures 1,614. Seemed like a fairly simple task. Post a few items on Craigslist, host a garage sale, haul a van-load or two off to charity. Yeah, not simple. Hard.

Imagine my excitement when I had nine replies from people interested in my baby gear. Now imagine my disappointment when my inbox was filled with spam for the next three days. Rookie mistake.

And the garage sale? Rain. We were still able to get rid of a few items - and host a pretty mean lemonade stand. But I'm pretty sure the kids ate up at least half the profits. Oh well.

So when it came time to load up the U-Haul, we still had too much stuff. Lucky for us, we had family members who were more than willing to pack up their cars and trucks and trailers to get us where we needed to be. After all, once all the boxes were unloaded, they could leave. We couldn't. And now, three weeks later, we're still sifting through boxes desperately searching for our iron, a couple pair of shoes, and our loose change cup. No doubt all of those items are in a box...somewhere.