Weekend Plans Post: On Slightly Delayed Spring Cleaning

We did the thing where you go through all of your clothes and get rid of the ones you know you’re not going to wear again. If you’d be ashamed to donate it, throw it away. If, jeez louise, it’s the t-shirt you bought when you went to see Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, the Indigo Girls, Shawn Colvin, and Meredith Brooks in 1997, okay, fine. Put it in the nostalgia storage bag. Everything else either sparks joy, gets worn to work on a regular basis, or is out the door.

Pardon the state of the car. Here is the aftermath of last weekend:

That’s the big trip. We took a smaller trip with two boxes and only 3 bags full of donations.

There were also two bags of trash and we’re working on one last bag of donations as we wander through the stuff we transferred from the Jumbo Ziploc Storage bags holding the winter clothing (which now hold the much smaller amount of summer clothing) and doing the baskets and baskets of laundry from the clothes that have been idle since April and smell like they could use a good washing before being hung up. As such, this last week has involved 2-3 loads of laundry a day. (Some of the loads were tiny ones that required stuff like drying on the rack instead of going through the dryer so it’s not like we’re doing baskets and baskets of sweatshirts. We only did, like, *TWO* of those.)

By the time Friday night rolls around, the laundry will be fully caught up. (Well, excepting a last few items that need to be washed by themselves and then set to dry on the rack. (The rack only has but so much real estate.))

And this has turned into us doing the spring cleaning that we’ve been putting off since the start of quarantine. Clean up this area, donate 20 books to this library, donate 10 books to that one… next thing you know, you’re finding yourself discussing what could, theoretically, happen if, theoretically, we got rid of enough stuff to consider selling the house and downsizing. This house still owes $X on the mortgage, but if we sold it for $Y and bought a house for $Y-X, we could, like, live without a mortgage payment. Like, entirely. Theoretically. Selling the house would be a major pain in the butt, after all. And, seriously, we’re nowhere *NEAR* wanting to do that. But, you know, in *THEORY*, what’s possible?

And that’s what happens when you donate five boxes and a dozen bags to the Goodwill. You start pricing houses in Fountain.

Though I’d probably want to donate about 8,000 books before I could *SERIOUSLY* start considering that. Because, seriously, we are never moving that many boxes of books again. Theoretically.

Anyway, this weekend will be devoted to finalizing the clothing transfer and putting off the switching of the sheets from cotton to flannel for another fortnight or so (THOUGH IT DID SNOW TODAY!).

So… what’s on your docket?

(Featured image is “Goodwill Store” by JeepersMedia and is licensed under CC BY 2.0)