Empty the storage trailer and garage, sell them at auction, or sell online -- give away all leftover items to charity.

Man, I have found so much great stuff and more things I did not even remember we own since the process of sorting storage began… one can’t even know. I even figured out I have full sets of dishes in just the colors and patterns I want – that I already bought and never unpacked years ago! The cool part is, I’ve moved to a home that actually allowed me to consolidate storage for businesses and home. I’ve given away some stuff, will sell a little bit more, and have already decided 20 feet of storage remaining out of 40 can just go, Go, GO! The new garage is coming together in order… we figure about three slow and lazy days to open boxes packed years ago and pitch, use, or put at the curb with a sign that says free to good home and we’ll be good to go at home (organized and pretty, pretty). As for permanent storage—we have 10 feet to donate, 10 feet of really old papers to rifle through left to sort, 10 feet of permanent storage, and another 10 feet of Christmas items in tow. Will the job of emptying storage and the garage ever be done? Yep! Because the one trailer we needed cleared out (a second forty footer) is already done [as in EMPTY] and the company will be coming to pick it up from the lot and the final garage of stuff that needed to be cleared out is packed, ready and waiting to head to the new house after it gets loaded on a truck tomorrow.

“The way we live our days, is the way we live our lives.” – Annie Dillard

Took the first steps towards completing this goal this year. Had the trailer moved to a different facility where it will (hopefully) be easier to unload and sort through once the weather warms and the sun comes back out… [it is a huge storage trailer—a shipping container packed full of home and garden items from our family mountain home].

Talked with the mamma san this morning to break the news that many of the items in storage we would rather donate or sell rather than pay money again to move… as many of the items belonged to her at some point and we’ve been keeping them on her behalf, we have agreed that if she can, we’ll have her come to help decide what stays and what goes.

[Many of the items belonged to deceased relatives—so it’s an emotionally charged lot of goods, but our conversation with her went about wanting to liquidate some and replacing it on the other end on an as needed basis with our own new stuff.]

With that understanding, that means we’ll start on reorganizing garage storage sorting/packing 1st this Spring and storage trailer sorting once weather hits passes spring rains and hits stable warm temp in early Summer.

Once these things are handled, we’ll get the interior of the home packed up a few boxes at a time—so by the time the end days of summer come, we’ll have been able to enjoy the nice weather where we are for one last summer season and more easily be ready to exit if we find the right “next” place to live by early fall time.

It is amazing what having a game plan can do to bring peace and ease to any move situation.

We don’t have to leave – as we love where we are – but we’re really ready to be back someplace warmer (we think) before we go through another long and gray wintertime.

Next step will be to figure out where we are going… but wherever it is, we’ll be ready before knowing and we are 100% sure we are heading back to the sun. As such, we are making all the right “moves” now so we’ll be ready to jump when the right next new home comes along.