The past year of the COVID-19 pandemic has had pros and cons. One of the big positives is it has given us more time to carefully downsize in ways that reduce waste such as giving through our neighborhood BuyNothing group on Facebook or selling online through sites like PoshMark (selling some of the better clothing, most others just going in bags to Goodwill), Mercari (sold lots of video games and elephant figurines) and Ebay (lots of extra boat gear and electronics) as well as sites that will buy used books or other bulk items. A downside is that organizing a yard sale isn’t that feasible (we’d hoped to participate in the neighborhood yard sale day last year…) honestly that’s OK as managing a yard sale isn’t quite something I want to do if I can avoid it.

Today is a tough day though. We have these large couches and armchair that we purchased in late 2001 after moving into our first house in Seattle – they were a little too big for that house. They fit across two rooms in this house and we still sit on them daily but we also have a leather couch and a nice custom blue sectional that we want to put in storage, so these big unwieldy couches that we bought because they were a good deal need to go. The good news is that even though they weren’t our favorites, we delayed on actually replacing them in our current bigger house until we finally made the decision to plan on going cruising which meant a decision to not buy any new furniture. Still, knowing that I wanted to replace these couches “someday” doesn’t make it easy to see that within the next week they will leave my house and there will be an empty space where they used to be.

So I console myself with the knowledge that as soon as the couches are gone, the house gets less comfortable and my desire to move onto the boat grows. The really big hard step will be taking all the art off the wall and packing it up for storage. And the kitchen, saying goodbye to that big kitchen and all the kitchen wares going to storage or being given away…

But for some reason, saying goodbye to these couches I don’t even really like is loaded with emotion for me. I guess it’s the big step of, I’m really leaving this house that I’ve lived in for nearly 14 years, the longest I’ve lived in any single house… On the bright side, all the money we saved on not buying new couches over the last 21 years and no new furniture of any kind in the last 6 years, will go toward potentially replacing some of the cushions on the boat which are over 20 years old.

So lets say goodbye to these big crazy couches we got at the Sears furniture outlet in late 2001. It’s been a good ride.