It was so liberating!
Each dusty yellow lid I popped off from a stack of totes brought surprise and disgust. I was surprised because it had been six years since I had seen the contents inside. I felt disgusted because some of the items had been trapped in darkness for over 25 years.
Why did I need this stuff? Why was I paying thousands of dollars for a box of books I read years ago?
Many, if not most, of us full-time RVers have a storage shed somewhere. Maybe in your hometown. Or, in our case, a place we thought we would settle someday (which turned out to be three different places – Utah, Tennessee, and Colorado – over the past 13 years).
Someday has not yet come. But the storage bills did.
So, we made a big decision to give ourselves a yearly raise and rid ourselves of this burden. But it did not come without a bag of emotions.
Three of those totes held the remains of a library I had built while living in Alaska for 12 years. Not all of the library made it out of Alaska, but many did.
If you know me, you know I love books. But those books, many of which I found at secondhand stores, had become expensive to keep and impossible to shelve in a 32-foot motorhome.
I sorted through and touched every single one of the 300+ books. They were put into piles of spiritual, business, writing, travel, and miscellaneous. I had three days to try to find them a good home.
Some were posted on Facebook Marketplace, where a charming person bought all the spiritual titles.
The rest found their way to a church back room, where the Friends of the Library sold books to help the local library. That felt like a good place for them to go.
Books were only three of the 30 totes and boxes.
I found my goat fur boots that I wore on special occasions in the Arctic. A local rancher bought them for her daughter.
I found my dragonfly-stained-glass lamp, which captured the attention of a couple who met us in the grocery store parking lot.
I found boxes of dishes and other random items that landed at a local thrift store, which donates proceeds to local charities.
But there was still more.
We rented a truck and drove eight totes 275 miles to my brother’s basement. We will be there over the holidays and want to distribute what is left to the family. You know, those special Christmas ornaments and family pictures.
Oh, the pictures.
A big task ahead is to discover what is on those VCR tapes with no labels and cassette tapes with road mix music Dad made for us 35 years ago.
More emotions are rising inside.
Then there are a couple of tubs with baseball and football cards my husband collected when he was a child in the 60s and early 70s. Luckily, we have grandchildren who are interested in seeing those.
It was tough getting rid of things I once thought were sentimental but had become more of a burden to our lifestyle.
It is all just stuff. Stuff that only meant something to me years ago. Stuff that current generations don’t want.
While we still have those boxes in the basement to touch once more, I do feel more liberated.
And I have decided to read more eBooks through my library account and slowly remove most of the books I carry around in the motorhome.
That one still stings a little!
How many of you still pay for a storage shed?
