Well, it's taken a good few years, but we've finally done it, we finally found the back of the shed. Yes, believe it or not we have actually waded through all the standard shed contents, plus a whole stack of off-cuts, worn-outs, keep-for-laters, and even a few just-in-cases. Not that it any of it went very far, most of it is now under the pergola.
The good news is though that it is now in specific piles, all of which makes the sorting easier to deal with (and the disorganisation easier to live with). Although to the untrained eye it might look like a total mess, there are actually four piles. We have a Rubbish Pile, a Sell Pile, a Store Pile and the Must-Keep-And-Take-With-Us Pile.
The next step, along with so much more sorting, is this week to order a skip to take away all the rubbish. Hopefully, we'll gauge the right size one - otherwise, we'll be running up and down the street early each Tuesday for the next month helping our neighbours fill their bins.
As to the selling pile, we had planned on having a Garage Sale this coming Sunday until we saw the weather forecast was for 38 degrees! Suddenly it didn't seem like a good idea anymore (can't think why) and we're now planning one for Sunday week.
There's no two way about it, having all this junk outside our kitchen window is a little distracting, but having somewhere to put things as soon as they're sorted is definitely making clearing easier – and more appealing. After all, there's nothing appealing about clearing out a cupboard, desk, or drawer if you know that once it's done you're just going to be left with a stack of oddments in the middle of the carpet.
So there you have it, sorting is one heck of a job – challenging, exhausting and distracting – but it certainly makes it feel like things are happening.
Two months ago if somebody had suggested Steve and I become full-time house-sitters… we'll I don't think I'd have laughed in their faces (that's rude after all), but I certainly wouldn't have considered it a serious option.
Truth is, Steve and I were ready for a change, even if we weren't particularly sure what the change would be. We'd never been particularly good at living the traditional nine-to-five life, although we'd given it a good go for the last twenty-plus years for the sake of our two daughters, but they were off learning to be independent and we, much to our surprise, found ourselves free to explore the world and rediscover ourselves.
But where do you start? After so many years of convention and limitation how do you know which way to look?
The only thing we did know was that our new life could officially start in April when it would just be the two of us rattling around in our well-loved family home. So as is a norm for me, I simply trusted my instinct and that 'the path' would appear AND, equally as important, that I would notice it.
Thankfully, true to form, it did. But it was nowhere near to what I expected.
In the two weeks after our realisation it seemed as if I every time I chatted to somebody about our half-baked plans, they raised the topic of house-sitting. It was truly amazing, conversations went from everything bar house-sitting to everything to do with house-sitting – people knew house-sitters, hired house-sitters, quoted articles on house-sitting, shared stories on house-sitting, the list went on. The discussions on the topic were endless, and even though I didn't twig for the first week that this might be 'the path', by the second week I was in no doubt. There was some conspiracy going on. So I mentioned it to Steve, who did some research… and here we are starting one of the biggest, craziest, and thrilling adventures of our lives. Starting off by selling just about every single thing we own.
So please come join us, explore the world with us and be part of our blog.
