Trash becomes treasure.

Say!
Look at those boxes

One, two, three..

How many boxes 

Do I see?

Covered in dust
Clean them out
Yes I must!
What’s in here?

What’s in there?
Please don’t hide that
Under that chair!

Yes you may have
That old telephone to play
Please let me get this done…..PLEASE….TODAY!
HEELLLPPP!!! I’m stuck inside a Dr Suess Book….Somebody get me out of here!!!

Well, that is a bit how I have been feeling this week with all the chaos that comes with packing a whole house!!

Now that Christmas and BB’s birthday are out of the way, I have been full time into dissecting our home. I have a plan. I’m not really following it so I guess you could say I have ‘guidelines’. I go from room to room and go through things and decide what to take, what to store, and what to try to sell.

This process is very cleansing. I have liked the idea of living minimally for quite a few years now, so about twice a year I do a clean out of various areas and get rid of stuff I haven’t used in a few years. Recently I stumbled upon these lads The Minimalists who make a whole lifestyle of living minimally. It was interesting to know there is a whole ‘minimal’ way of life out there. I have always enjoyed big clean outs. So it is fair to say this project is not as massive as it could have been. There are a few pockets here and there which have been neglected but otherwise I’m tracking well.

Having said that, doing a big cleanse with a Bower Bird incarnate (BB) and a curious 2.5 year old is not easy.

BB, whose name should now be Bower Bird, has always been an explorer and a collector – of anything that takes his fancy. Rocks, sticks, nuts off trees, shiny things, fans from computers, fans of any sort. The list goes on. So it was actually quite amusing when I asked if he wanted to help me pull everything out of the attic, BB got so excited he started jiggling around and racing up the staircase. His little exclamations of ‘OOHHHH, WOOOWWW, What’s this mummy???!!!! Is just so cute.

Five hours into a task however the ‘cute’ wears off. Then when I start finding things have been removed from the rubbish pile and are currently being reinvented as a prop in some wonderful imaginary pay scenario… Well let’s just say I am taking a lot of moments to take ‘deep breaths’ and try to enjoy the story unfold.

This is all then followed by the discovery that I have snuck something into the ‘give away’ or ‘sell’ pile that is actually quite precious to the child it belongs to. To be fair, if you have not looked at something no less played with it in several months – how precious can it be?? Well, to FB – extremely, and she cannot even talk to me about how upset she is. FB puts her little hand out and says ‘NO MUMMY, STOP TALKING. I UPSET’. To which I need to act empathetic when I just want to crack up laughing at how cute this outburst is.

So to summarise.

We still have no leaving date and details are not yet finalised with SB’s workplace. When I suggested this was all a big joke on me, and that I felt at any moment to be told its all off and this was a big mistake….he assured me it definitely was happening. So I am turning the house upside down, organising getting the house rented out, trying to organise catching up with as many friends as I can and getting creative in the kitchen to run down the pantry, fridge and freezer.  Quite often we eat ‘Freezer Surprise’ which is something that has been frozen for so long I no longer remember what it is! Its pot luck really. It can either be really scary or really a very pleasant surprise!…