Shortly after Mr. Roller Coaster and I PCS’ed to our first duty station, he purchased an entire set of bedroom furniture. Without my knowledge. Without my input. I saw the furniture for the first time when it was in my bedroom. And I’ve been wanting to get rid of it ever since.
Mostly, I despise the big dresser. I can live with the small dresser. I can live with the nightstands. But the big dresser is just so ridiculously big that it eats up whatever room it’s in. When we lived in Japan and had to squeeze our oversized American belongings into a tiny Japanese house, that dresser was so big that the movers couldn’t get it up the stairs. It ended up sitting in our kitchen housing canned goods.
When we moved into our house here in the States, the movers somehow managed to get the dresser up the stairs but were so worn out by its heft that they left gouges in our hardwood floors as they pushed the monstrosity across the hallway. The dresser hasn’t moved from our guest room since.
A few weeks ago, I decided I had had enough of the big dresser. But nothing is ever as simple as a listing on Craigslist. We couldn’t consider getting rid of it until I emptied the drawers. And I couldn’t empty the drawers until I had somewhere to put the random contents. And I wouldn’t have somewhere to put the contents until Mr. Roller Coaster put plywood in the small upstairs attic we’ve never used because there was no plywood. That’s a lot of work just to sell a piece of furniture.
This past weekend we decided to get started on Operation Sell That Dresser. Mr. Roller Coaster was on plywood duty, while I purchased storage tubs and ransacked the big dresser. But I didn’t stop there. I went from the big dresser to the small dresser, from the guest room to my bedroom, from my closet to the kids’ closets, and finally from the main attic to the once unused attic that is now floored with plywood.
In my travels throughout my house, I was increasingly shocked by the collection of junk I was hanging onto. And I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of space I had created just by purging some of that junk. Old t-shirts are going to school for my students to use as smocks. Old battered purses are going into Little C’s dress-up box. Old clothes I’ll never wear are in a bag headed to Good Will. Old college notebooks that are filled with words I haven’t read in well over a decade are piled up in the recycling bin. And my trash can runneth over with other things I have absolutely no use for.
As a military family, we tend to use PCS’es as opportunities to sort through all of our possessions and get rid of the items we haven’t used since our previous PCS. But I’m glad we didn’t wait until our next move. I’m glad I now have almost a dozen storage tubs that are neatly labeled with their contents up on our newly renovated attic. And I’m glad we can now focus on selling that big, cumbersome, obnoxious, ugly dresser.
Now we just need to figure out how we’re going to get it down the stairs.
How often do you do a mega cleaning in your house? Doesn’t it feel good to purge?
I'm in the process of moving now and since it's a small move from my parents house to the new place across town I am doing it in small loads and purging as I go. I took 3 bags of trash to the dump this morning along with a box of mismatched beaten up hangers and I have a box and bag of clothes and shoes that will be going to Goodwill tomorrow (or soon, I'm still in the purging process).
I feel amazing getting rid of so much stuff, and watching my life getting less cluttered. I can't find my floor half of the time right now but I know it's for a good cause. =)
I've been thinking about this for a while now; going over in my head what I need to do in each bedroom to create space, and get rid of all that junk we once saw as trash. I just have yet to find the time to actually do it all!
It's so hard for me to get rid of stuff! I'm such a pack rat!
I recently cleaned out our pantry.. it is so amazing! All of the extra space! 🙂
I love purging… and I'll be doing it again when our household goods get here from Germany… in November 😉
Hubby bought our furniture, too, without my input. It's not hideous, but I can't WAIT to get rid of it all. Kudos for selling yours!
We purge every PCS, once before the move, and once after (we usually have something that we took with us and wondered WHY).