Dealing with all the stuff

Barely eight weeks until Christmas. My early plan had us running the house on minimal stuff come Spring, so we could more easily assess the move.

While we've shed ourselves of some, the stuff lifestyle runs strongly in my family. Neerav has a great post "Too much stuff: Consumption is not a way of life" where he comments :

When you buy a bigger home to accommodate your stuff, you pay higher taxes, higher heating bills, bigger cooling bills, a bigger mortgage, plus whatever the upkeep costs are for the stuff itself.

So what to do? Tonight I will decide which of my shoes I really don't need anymore. That will be a great start. Perhaps get those spare cables onto eBay as well? Brilliant. Then I need a reward - I wonder what that will be?

Oh crap!

What the heck have I been thinking? It is October and we're still in Sydney. Still no schools chosen. Still got a house full of stuff that isn't going to come down with us.

Kids have just gone back to start the fourth & final school term of the year. That gives us about nine weeks to get it sorted and underway. Wondering about how long we can afford to pay rent in two cities & how much petrol we'll burn on the mighty Hume Highway?

At least the road is almost entirely dual carriageway now. That will help.

How I lost 6 weeks without even trying!

It is hard to believe, now that I look it up, the last entry here was nearly six weeks ago!

What progress has been made on the move? Precisely none. Nothing physically, at least. The news continues to spread - reactions continue to vary. This past school holidays we were planning to head down for a few days and check out some schools - but sudden car trouble spelt a rapid end to those plans.

A wonderful friend has sent us up the guide to schools in Victoria - but somehow I haven't even taken a look inside yet. Other priorities, more urgent, more day-to-day press in and leave no room for this important, but not urgent bigger picture.

So what now? Well my big plan was to begin shedding 'stuff' throughout the winter. Winter is but days away. There's plenty of things around that I need to eBay. None will be coming with us.

After that, the plan is to seriously reduce our stuff into the Spring, culminating in a garage sale that leaves us with a functional quantity of belongings for our remaining days in Sydney.

Then there's the final give or chuck session before the move, which is looking like late January 2010.

Of course in the mean time there's extra money that will need to be saved for moving costs. Brushing up my earning ability so that there's more coming in as soon as possible once we hit the ground in Melbourne. Deciding on schools, enrolling, finding a place to live, fixing the car issues that are ongoing, the lists does seem to go on - and that's just the short list I can come up with at four in the morning!

None of this touches on recent events here in Sydney - the sudden passing of a friend of ours that brings life into sharp focus. Perhaps next time?