We had been in the house for fourteen years and had accumulated our fair share of “stuff”. Here is a story about our stuff and what we did with it.
This was going to be the largest physical task of our agenda. I had a tendency to take anything that was given to me for free regardless of it was actually useful not. My intentions were always pure. This had led me to amass a collection that had gotten slightly away from me. I had things stashed in all corners of the house. I hope you’re ready to read about our stuff and what we did with it.
Hayley was always very adamant about keeping the house tidy and free of clutter.
As a result I had gotten very good at stacking things in a “tetris” like fashion. I was very proud of this skill, but it had given me a false sense of the amount of things that I owned. Hayley’s parents had graciously offered more than enough space to store anything that we wanted to keep behind in Canada. We would either have it shipped over later or kept aside as things that we were not ready to part with permanently.
I had a shed out back.
It was filled with various bits, camping equipment, car parts and really random things that I had plans to use one day and never did. Working as a mechanic and tradesman over 20 years I also had my garage. I stored two large toolboxes filled with all sorts of tools that I had collected. My dad and grandfather were also tradesmen and upon dad’s retirement, I was given his tools. We had renovated the house over the years and there were tools for that.
Needless to say I had lots of tools.
To me these were a testament to my career, my father’s career and his before him. I also did not use many of them anymore. I earned a good living working in the steel industry and I had stopped fixing cars at home for the extra money, but they were mine. A sort of definition of the working professional I had grown into.
The garage was the spot that I had created to hang out with friends and watch sports. I had always taken so much pride in making it a “cool” space. The memorabilia that I had collected over the years was on display. There and flags from race tracks we had visited adorned the walls. I had even painted a large logo of my favourite NHL hockey team on the door – GO HABS. If there was a moment in sports history that took place, I witnessed it there. Incredible playoff runs, the “Golden Goal” in the 2010 Winter Olympics, the Bautista bat flip and so many more. I had always corrected people when they referred to the garage as a “man cave”. I made sure that they knew it was a clubhouse.
For all these reasons I felt that I had become very attached to all my possessions.
When we started to sort through our things one room at a time, we started with the “easy” rooms first. The laundry room was pretty straight forward, three piles; one to donate, one rubbish and one to keep. That space was relatively easy to deal with. I had not stored anything that I had considered to be sentimental. Most of it ended up in the back of my pickup truck and off to the dump it went.
This theme continued through an upstairs bedroom. It was a space that became the room where the extra bits went when making room for new things we bought. Some random furniture that we were able to find a home and mostly just “stuff” that we had been putting off getting rid of. Or, we were not sure of what to do with.
As the pile of things to donate grew it became obvious that there was an opportunity to make a few dollars from. This was the beginning of Hayley’s venture into the world of Facebook marketplace. This is where my relationship with possessions changed.
It became obvious to me that my perceived value of any given item was drastically different than the value assigned by the person interested in buying it.
This was a daunting task at times, as negotiating can feel personal. It took some time for me to understand that this buyer was not insulting me. They were just trying to get a better deal on something they wanted. As we listed and sold things, I became more aware that most of my attachment to an item, was not in the monetary value. It was the sentimental value. Once I was able to separate the two, it became easier to put an item up for sale at a price that made it easy to sell.
My favourite example of this emotional connection to possessions was a conversation I had with Hayley about a box of DVDs. In 2022 DVDs are all but worthless. Not even a local second hand shop was interested in buying them. Despite me offering the whole lot for twenty-five cents each. Hayley was very fond of the TV series “Lost” . She had the entire box set (unrelatedly, the ending to that series was a huge let-down). She really wanted to hang on to it even though it is available to stream on one of the many services we already subscribed to.
There was never any intention on her part to ever watch it, but she had enjoyed watching it on TV with her Dad. There was a call made to her father to see if he wanted to keep the set, he did not. It was in that moment that we realized that it wasn’t the actual physical ownership of the DVDs that she didn’t want to part with. It was the memory of sitting down weekly to watch the show with someone she loved.
We aren’t always attached to something because of its value.
It’s the feeling that we get when we remember a happy moment, this is triggered visually by our things. I think it is hard for us to think that we can still have those memories without having a physical reminder. I struggled with selling off my tools. Not because of the happy thoughts they gave me, but the meaning that I had assigned to them. They were a symbol of my career, I had earned money with them.
When really, it wasn’t the tools that had made the money. It was my hard work and years of honing my skills. The experience gained from using something was the true value. It was crystal clear to me that this was the case when the young man who bought the majority of my collection couldn’t have cared less about how I felt. I was ready to pass the torch along. He was just ready to load the box on his trailer and drive back to Peterborough.
In the end, we were left with about a half dozen large storage totes.
In them were the things that were absolutely irreplaceable and a few things that we were hanging on to for the future. We donated many bags of clothes, most of them not worn in ages. What was left, we vacuum bagged into four suitcases and two carry-on bags. We were ready to take on a move to a one bedroom apartment in a new country with what looked like nothing. And I suppose in comparison to what we started with, it was.
I hope you enjoyed reading our stuff and what we did with it. If you’re interested in our stories please continue reading with the next lifestyle blog post about the search for our new home.