Deconstructing My Sticks and Bricks

With a week to go to be out of my house, it dawned on me that I wasn’t nearly as far along on purging and packing stuff as I should be. Progress had been made – empty spots were starting to show up in the house, but the garage had not even been started and a lot of stuff remained. My sticks and bricks (the term used by travelers for those who live in one spot) still had a lot of deconstructing to do.




I’m a minor league packrat, having collected various items consisting of three categories:
1) things that I valued as a connection to my past
2) things that fascinated me in the present
3) things that were free that I might use someday.

Purging the last item in that list was fairly easy; after all, some of these thing were no longer ever likely to be used and the rest could be bought again rather than taking the trouble to store them on the off chance I might use them someday. The second item was more difficult for the things that still fascinate me. But my priorities have changed; some things are no longer of interest to me when I am out travelling, other things will be more of interest to me travelling. So, I would have to sort those items into take, store, and purge. The first item was the most difficult to get rid of anything off. These were irreplaceable items from another day, invoking memories of times past when I was more innocent and carefree.

So, packing was going to take a little longer than normal as I had to consider everything from the point of view of might I need it travelling and if not, should I bother to store it ? At least I have use of a large garage as a safety valve for storage – I can pack a lotta “might use it someday”, “memory box item”, and “keep if I move back into a sticks and bricks”. I also had the RV in front of my house, I could throw stuff in there I was sure to need, and see what fit for things such as lawn chairs. I’d go from thinking I’m doing OK packing to finding yet more crap and thinking I’m never going to get packed in time.

The week remaining dwindled down to a few days. I had pulled the plug on the home services I would not need: land line and cable internet. I had changed cell providers to get a much beefier (and expensive) data plan. The big one for packing is I had scheduled junk haulers to take away my crappy furniture (which is most of it). My blue bin of recyclables was crammed full of cardboard and out of date computer books. My living room looked like a furniture storage room, loaded with everything to toss I could carry there.

Living room furniture to trash
Ralph’s Furniture Warehouse. Prices can’t be beat!

When you order a junk removal service, they would like an estimate of how much junk you have, estimated in “loads”. One load equals one truck full of junk hauling. I had estimated half a load, thinking of a previous truck I had seen filled. I could see potential problems when the truck that showed up was about a third smaller than what I expected. But I still thought I had wiggle room. Mike, my junk hauler from Bestway Disposal thought otherwise, looking at the house stuff saying that it alone plus my mattress was going to pretty much be a load. This was a problem, as I still had garbage out back, and a very large box of garbage in the garage.

Mike began the job of loading my furniture, doing an admirable job kicking apart my one inch particle board entertainment unit. Have to say, being a junk hauler gives you some good opportunities to work out your frustrations. Mike didn’t have any help, so I assisted a bit where needed, helping him move my mattress upstairs, having to bend it around the corner of the stairwell. My heavy metal desk from upstairs was also a challenge – Mike really could have used an assistant but he couldn’t even get someone to come out who lived nearby for some quick cash work.

We fit everything in from the house and proceed back to the garage. The truck is almost full, so now I’m prioritizing stuff to throw in, picking stuff that can’t go in the black bin first. Some of my plastics end up being re-allocated to the blue bin for when it is emptied again by my renter, and my big cardboard box holding the rest of the garage junk is left behind, but Mike manages to fit in almost everything – the bits that are left might be useful to the renter or can be junked in the black cart eventually.

Happy to be done with junk removal, I assess the remaining work to get out. I had done an initial purge a few weeks back everywhere, so every room remaining had had at least the obvious junk thrown out. Most rooms were getting close to done, but I had still the whole kitchen to pack, my computer room needed to be decommissioned with all the packing involved in that, and my upstairs library / rumpus room was in a state of chaos.

Upstairs much to move SR603032
This was taken before the love seat had been thrown out, but it was otherwise in this chaos.

I now had all of one evening and one day to finish everything and get out. Still going from thinking I’m OK to thinking I’ll never get all this stuff out in time!

About ralph

Just another blog to share some thoughts with the world. Want to comment? If you know how to contact me, I can manually set up a commenting account for you. Sorry, commenting is not open to the general public at this time.
This entry was posted in RV. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply