PACKING UP

How do you sort out a house you've been in for 24 years? I should confess upfront that Susan and I are not Kondo afficiondos nor did we watch all the episodes of Swedish Death Cleaning series so we had a lot of stuff to sort through. For what seemed like months, I was making twice weekly visits to St Vinnies to drop off everything from clothes to kitchenware. We hired a 12 metre skip and recruited our wonderful neighbour Mike to smash up furntiture that was no good to anyone. 

I even threw out Livia, the polystyrene statue that had starred in a production of "Women Beware Women" back in the 1980s. Poor thing. Her head had falled off a number of times only be stuck back on with jewel encrusted gaffer tape.But being outside for nearly twenty years meant that she had lost her charm. 

Mike, our helpful neighbour

Goodbye to Livia

Another cultural challenge was books. Susan is a re-reader of books and I always claim that I'm going to so between us, we had 16 or was it 17 full bookcases of various sizes. We decided to be bold and see if we could cull 50% of the books. But then the question was what do with the 'rejects'. I discovered that Book Grocers will actually buy books literally by the shelf. The idea that they might find a new home was comforting. I'm sure one day I'll turn to my shelves and look for a book I used to own. But there are so many new works that I still have to read and I don't have that many years left to revisit all the words that have bought me joy in the passed.

Sebastian flew over to make his choices and many of his musical instruments were gratefully received by his old school, Strahmore High.

One of the hardest decisions to make was what to do with the piano that had been in the family for over a hundred years but that none of us played anymore. No one wants pianos these days but we couldn't bear to think of it going to the tip. Then Susan discovered a company that recycles pianos by turning them into furniture. It was picked up the same company that had delivered it all those years ago. 

In the end, we filled one and half containers with our remaining furniture and fittings to be sent west.

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