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Monday, February 14, 2011

Picking up Your Entire Life and Moving it Across the Sea - Part I



Bill and I have moved 8 different times in the last 26 years.  Once we moved 3 times in 18 months.  I would say we have the hang of it when it comes to moving.  But retiring and moving to a foreign country is not an easy thing to do, especially when you know that you cannot take all of your current personal things with you.  You think, "WOW" that should be so much easier with less things to move.  But taking a trip down memory lane and purging these memories is not always an easy thing to do. 

But now that the holidays have past and the most special of holidays the Superbowl, we decided to start doing some cleaning out this weekend and we started in the attic.  It is pretty overwhelming going through 26 years of papers and personal things that belonged to your children, siblings, parents and grand parents.  What do you do with all of these things?  Who do you give it to?  Who wants it?  What do you throw away?  What do we take with us to Belize?  Anyone have a bulldozer we can borrow?





We started with cleaning out one corner of the attic, which held many boxes with years of tax returns and these are our least sentimental items.  I thought I should shred all of our tax information and bank statements before I trashed them, so I pulled out our handy dandy shredder and let it rip.  It says right on the top of  the shredder 6 pages max, but don't believe everything you read, that was not true and it over heated many times.  So I would have to wait and let the shredder cool down and then I would start again.  7 extra large trash bags later and many hours, we were done.

Before


After, wow it looks pretty empty there in that space.


Oops, looks like we missed one box stuck back there in the back, oh well back to the shredder.



4 comments:

  1. Wow that's a lot of tax returns! The government should be so proud. :)

    I know what you mean though. It's difficult to toss away stuff that has a whole history attached to it. I hope you saved some of them. Your kids and future generations might be interested in them when the time comes.

    Wishing you a smooth transition!

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  2. AJ it was a lot of tax returns and I was proud that they were gone.

    I have been taking things that belong to my daughter in my suitcase everytime I go and visit her. Things that have been in my family, I hope to find family members that will want to keep them.

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  3. Nice job, guys! We spent all of last year doing stuff like that. We're still working on it, but getting closer every day. We scanned most of our photos and important papers into our computers (and made multiple backups) and kept only one photo album of a cross-section of favorite photos. It's hard, but liberating at the same time. Good luck!

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  4. Gosh Emily, it has really been hard. We have so much stuff and so many things I really just don't know what to do with it. I plan on scanning our photos and documents too. That will take forever I think. Good idea taking a photo album with you. I agree that it has been somewhat liberating..when I look at something and think I want to keep it..I tell myself, how many more times do you really want to move this stuff. haha. Not too many more that is for sure.

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