There is a phenomenon when you skydive called ground rush. The serenity and calm of being under canopy are replaced by the visual sensation of the earth coming at you really, really fast!
Lee and I have something similar going on with regards to my mother-in-law.
We’ve been prepping for some time now to get Patsy ready to move back home to Alabama. With our impending house sale and move to the D.R., we needed to ensure Patsy is taken care of. We had always talked about 2019 being a transition year for us, so Patsy had been, for some time now, on a waiting list with the state of Alabama for government-assisted housing. As with all things involving God’s perfect timing, a couple of weeks after Lee and I earnestly prayed for the missionary opportunity and surrendered that reality to God – thus drastically moving our transition timeline forward – an apartment became available for Patsy.
The timing was perfect, but it also meant we needed to get a move on with regards to packing all of Patsy’s items and coordinating the logistics for the move. For someone who occupies just one room of our house, you would think this is a relatively easy task, and it would have been if not for the attic.
Yes, the attic. That oft-forgotten space above our heads used to keep boxes and boxes of stuff we all forgot we had. And with Patsy’s move day set for next weekend (1/13), the reality of needing to get all her stuff together came at us like a cardboard box ground rush equivalent. So Lee and I spent the day in the attic bringing down just about everything that was up there, and then playing a complex game of Tetris in our garage to get all the boxes and storage bins in the right piles.
“This is mother’s pile, and this one is for my stuff from my old office, and we’ll use this space here for giveaways, and …….. awwwwwwww, I forgot I had this!”
As cumbersome and tedious as it was, it was very satisfying to know we knocked out a major task in terms of getting Patsy better positioned for her move next week. Still, it was a sobering reminder of all the crap and junk we collect and keep over the years.
If you’ve ever contemplated downsizing and decluttering, I hope our experience helps motivate you to do so. Lee and I are quickly realizing how unnecessary over 50% of the stuff we have really is. And if you’re not careful, you may end up relating to the subject of George Carlin’s ‘Stuff’ routine.
Gil Gonzalez 
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