Moving Day

            The last time our family experienced a moving day was more than twenty years ago. From time to time the urge has come over us to repeat the chore, but each time we have been saved by fortuitous circumstance. The difficulty is that both me and my wife have accumulated a veritable store house of valuables, or junk, depending upon your point of view. But lately with the children all gone it has become time to downsize to a smaller residence. It is amazing how time dulls the memory of the pain associated with moving.

            It began with the disposal of keepsakes and that is where it almost ended. During the disposal negotiations tempers flared over my championship junior high basketball as opposed to her box full of grade school dolls, my three point deer head against her treadle sewing machines (all four of them), my, well you get the idea. With three closets left to go and the attic barely touched we had eighty seven boxes (eighty eight if you counted the miscellaneous paper stuff) stacked in the garage and only three in the trash.

            Sensing a looming divorce we turned to another area in order to deflate the tension. I was in favor of hiring a moving company to do a turnkey job. She, on the other hand, thought using a rental truck would be less expensive and more practical. Guess who is the one destined to do all the loading and unloading? So the debate raged on. Ultimately we compromised. I won with the moving company option but with the proviso we do the packing ourselves. It was not a wise decision.

            Packing began on a Wednesday morning. By Friday afternoon the household was in such a state of turmoil that work had to be suspended. It began with the clothes. She had approximately a half billion out-of-fashion outfits she absolutely refused to discard due to their practically new condition and besides they might come back into style. When I hinted (experienced spouses always only hint) at their uselessness she grew surly and stalked out of the room. From there we moved on to the kitchen where we had four complete matching sets of dishes, every cooking gadget known to the free world, and at least fifty pounds of empty plastic containers that “might come in handy someday.” To her credit she did relent enough to discard those plastic items with no lids but absolutely refused to part with a single dish nor any of the gadgetry.

            Finally we came to my prized stuff, mostly stashed in the garage, that I had spent untold hours acquiring. For some unknown reason, known only to the fairer sex, she objected to 35 screw drivers, twelve socket sets, and two dozen coffee cans full of assorted screws, bolts, and other valuable repair items not to mention scores of vintage hand tools that might serve a good purpose if we ever lost power.

            There were also issues like my favorite easy chair, her prize rocker, and a variety of old worn out pieces of furniture that would not fit into a smaller space. Ultimately we were forced to forgo the whole idea of a moving day. After all our children deserve to inherit all those valuable items and who are we to deprive them of the privilege of overseeing their disposal.