In January of 2017, three years after my divorce, I started to get rid of things. Text books that were irrelevant. Nativity cookie cutters I had never unboxed. Clothes from the mid 90’s. Every so often, I would empty the cabinets and storage closets that were third on the list of selling features of the home and do a light purge. The first selling feature was location, aka the expansive canyon, and second was also location, as in close to the highway but not too close.
View. Proximity. Storage. The real holy trinity of real estate.
In 2018, when I decided to rent the place out and move to Carbondale into my dream home with my person, I had to accelerate the purge process as everything quite literally had to go so that the tenant could move in with her things. I boxed up items I surely needed in Carbondale, like winter weather gear and important documents and kitchen supplies, and had it ready for the movers to pick up - labeled in adorable boxes, stacked by the front door. Good girl. You have your shit together. They would come grab these things, and some furniture, and then swing up to Golden to pick up my person’s contributions, and off we would go.
Over the next day, we moved most of my worldly possessions from the downtown drop-off point up the 13 winding miles in smaller vehicles that could manage the back country roads, and settled into a four bedroom place with a dream kitchen and ancillary butler’s kitchen. There was space for all the things, and even though there weren’t closets per se, one of the bedrooms was easily converted into a storage space that was tidy and so cute.
A box of Holiday Decor.
A box of Summer Clothing.
A box of sewing and craft supplies.
A place for everything, and everything in its place.
And yet, it took me three more months to figure out how to get the last bits of other things out of my house.
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