settling

The magnitude of this process keeps amazing me. Tonight I started trying to pull the living room into some kind of shape, and after a couple of hours of aches after shoving things one way or another, half of the front room is now effectively liveable. It's not perfect, and it's going to take a while to make it ideal. Regardless, the other half is now in worse shape, and every time I glance into my bedroom it's clear how much more still has to be done.

Thanks to a couple of good friends, I've been forcing myself to pare down. Items that I haven't used in years have begun to go. Broken things that I swore I would fix one of these days have gone in the trash. Sentimental items that have lost some of their value are gone. There have been a couple of major Goodwill runs, but I could still do a lot more. (Suggestions from anyone about how to sell old Spode china and decorative plates are needed.) Tackling Anna's toys is a major next step. I've already warned her that many of the toys she has will be going away. She seems mostly okay with this.

Sidenote: Thinking about my father and other men I've grown up around, I've started to believe that we are congenitally designed to be packrats. From a biological/nature perspective, I'm not sure why this would be the case. In any case, I'm trying to buck the system and strip down to the things that are important and useful.

What has really begun to happen with this move is a new start. A stripping out of items left over from the last few years of madness and roller coasters. A step toward stability and pasitive forward building for Banana and me.

Okay. Enough navel-gazing. More thoughts and details later.