When you take a drubbing on the price of the house you are selling, you have to make compromises. The one we decided on was to save money on the move by doing it ourselves. There are a lot of places that will let you do part of the move yourself. If you let them pack, load, drive, unload, you will may the most. For everything you do, the cost drops.
I’ve sworn I’d no longer move myself, but that was when the house held my equity. Now that it vanished, I’m back to packing our stuff. We are looking into having someone else load it for us.
There is an additional expense to move the cats. It will be August, and too hot to ship them via air. If it’s higher than 95 in the destination city, the airlines won’t take them. And it will be around 120, so that’s out. We have three, so I can’t take them on the airline with me, I could take one, but that leaves two more.
With all these unanswered questions, I’m getting a lot of advice. The one that startled me the most was the suggestion that I get rid of all my books. Yes, I have a lot of them. Some are my husband’s cookbooks, some are the books I have because I am a coach and trainer, and some are reference books for my art–making books and drawing with colored pencils. Those are my references, my answers, my source books. I can’t just get rid of them.
What about those fiction books? I’ve already culled them down. And the rest are my refuge, my big green field to play in, my warm comfort that makes me feel at home. I decorate with books. People who still own hundreds of beanie babies do not get to tell me to get rid of my books “because they just sit there.” I know they need to be dusted, but so do your Gameboys and DVDs. It’s a hard thing to explain–books aren’t an investment, they don’t do anything, but they hold dreams, wisdom, lessons hard learned, laughter, and simple joy. The bring me smiles, tears, heart-pounding fear and the nods of recognized emotion. And yes, when I don’t dust, they bring me sneezes.
I’ll shed old files, clothes, shoes, even my giant stash of beads, all 100 pounds of them. (Write it you are interested, I’m selling them by the pound), but I am keeping the books. They made me who I am, and they make a house a home.
–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach. See here work at QuinnCreative.com
Image: vedantam.com
