The joys of winnowing

Yesterday I looked out my big picture window and saw the back end of a U-Haul blocking the view. Today the truck is gone, having disgorged its contents into my house, my son's apartment, and the Habitat for Humanity Restore, where our excess furniture will find a new home, provided that someone out there wants a 30-year-old particle-board computer desk or a wobbly side table.

We still have a huge task ahead of us, emptying boxes and rearranging the contents of cabinets so everything fits, but just at the moment I'm letting it all sit. I woke up in the wee hours with shooting pains in my shoulder from all the lifting, so today I intend to focus on less strenuous tasks, like thinking about beans. Where are we going to store all the varieties of dried beans we kept in the pantry at the Jackson house? The one cabinet here that still has space is susceptible to mouse invasion, so I can't put anything down there that's potentially gnawable, if that's a word. 

My favorite part of the process of combining two households is winnowing out duplicate items. We now have an excess of cake pans, so let's toss out the old dented ones! I can't tell you how delighted I am to get rid of a broken floor lamp and an ugly table lamp and replace them with the newer, nicer ones from the other house. Too many coffee mugs? Let's take everything that features an advertising logo and throw it in the Goodwill box.

Or one of them. We have three boxes full of things to take to the Goodwill, and we're not nearly done yet. Anyone need a microwave? I'm keeping the newer one but the old one still works. I'm not getting rid of the extra iron, though. Given the volume of ironing my husband does, it's only
a matter of time before our iron wears out. I'll keep the other one as a backup.

We probably could have made some money on some of the things we gave away, but who has time for a yard sale? Let someone else get some use out of my old worn-out stuff and I'll put my time to better use, like thinking about beans and drinking tea and enjoying the unobstructed view out my front window. At some point all these boxes will have to be unpacked, but for the moment I think I'll just sit and enjoy the absence of trucks.