Seasons of Temporary Acquisition

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My house is a mess.

That's probably not the sentence I should lead off with in a blog post about organizing, but there you have it. Last week, the movers brought my dad's furniture to his apartment about three miles from our house. Last weekend, my husband, my dad and I sorted through the rest of the stuff at his condo in New Jersey. Some of the things got tossed, many got donated and/or left behind and way too much made the trip back to Pennsylvania with us. Now, in addition to the regular day-to-day clutter in our mostly empty nest, we have boxes and piles of things to deal with -- things that were not trash and almost treasure. Some will be donated, some we will keep. All need to be sorted and everything needs a home besides the place where it is currently taking up space.

It's a process, right?

I'm not sorry we erred on the side of caution in bringing things here; I'd rather sort more slowly and carefully to make sure nothing we valued for physical or emotional reasons gets tossed. I am, however, a little overwhelmed by all that has to be done on top of the regular stuff that has to be done.

Some seasons of life are like that. When my husband and I moved into our first apartment, there were about five boxes that took me forever to unpack (much to his dismay). When we got ready to send my daughter off to college, our house looked like a storage facility for much of August. Some seasons of life, by their very nature, seem to attract "stuff" that isn't dealt with in a simple fashion. Maybe it's there only temporarily, like my daughter's dorm supplies. Maybe it needs a home. Maybe we need time to adjust to getting rid of it. Whatever the reason, it rents space in our homes and our heads until we deal with it.

I'm trying to remind myself that if I do this right, I'll actually have an opportunity to divest myself of a few things here that need new homes. I've already gotten rid of one piece of furniture that I haven't liked for a long time, replacing it with a smaller piece that was at my parents' house. In the process, the contents of the discarded piece found new homes, were tossed out or stuck in a box for me to sort through as time permits. That last strategy was less than ideal, but was the consequence of removing the old piece from the house as soon as possible.

I'm trying to come at this a little at a time, and though my head and heart know that's the best strategy, my toes are tired of running into boxes.

Tune in tomorrow for the three keys I'm using to stay sane as I work through this temporary state of affairs.