Our daughter moved out. Does that count as a net gain or a net loss?
This year we took that opportunity to do some major minimalizing (yeah, I know, oxymoronic). She graduated from college and started her Navy career by driving her ship across the Atlantic to their new homeport in Rota, Spain. One of her military benefits is a one-time move of her personal property from her home of record (Oahu) to that new homeport, up to the weight allowance for new officers. We've known about this opportunity for months, so last Christmas my spouse & daughter went through the whole house and made a list of the things she'd need to set up her own apartment. It wasn't just her room and a couple of chairs-- everything was on the table. She added the guest bedroom, some livingroom furniture, half the contents of the kitchen cabinets, Christmas decorations, wool rugs, and a lot of wall art.
So, at the end of June, the movers took away four wooden crates (~4000 pounds) of her stuff. Ironically some of it is furniture & decor that my spouse purchased when she was a new ensign in Rota over 30 years ago. Personally I think our daughter might have overdone it, but that's not my problem and she can deal with that when she unpacks and gets ready for her next move in 2016. She's thrilled to have it, and we're thrilled to get rid of it!
As everyone went through the house, we set aside the things that our daughter decided she'd grown out of. That was another entire carload to Goodwill, although admittedly our daughter had been stashing some of those things for over a decade.
By the way, parking a moving van at the end of your driveway is a great way to get back in touch with the neighbors. We got major love that day.
Since that move, spouse and I have emptied the rest of the furniture out of three of our four bedrooms. We removed the carpet & padding from two of them (10 years old and 25 years old) and completely repainted. Once the new carpet/padding is in, we'll gradually refurnish from Craigslist-- or not. Some of the furniture is not missed by us at all, and I'm certainly happy to get rid of the excess kitchen contents. One of the rooms will be used for the photo sorting & scanning project from hell-- 30 years of our own photo albums, all of the albums I've acquired from my parents, and another century of family portraits. That'll probably take the rest of 2014 and part of 2015, and provide a lifetime of Throwback Thursday posts.
I wish we'd put this entire house on a truck scale before we started, and then weighed it regularly during the process! I continue to get rid of books that I no longer need. My spouse has started getting rid of her 1980s textbooks & notes, and we've moved a six-foot stack of paper to the recycling.
The only major purchases we've made this year have been plane tickets...
