Finding Your Sass After Seventy

New Condo in Evanston

In a previous blog post I revealed that within a span of eleven weeks my husband and I (1) purchased a condominium in Evanston, Illinois, (2) promptly drove 1200 miles back to Orlando Florida to purge our townhome of anything resembling clutter in anticipation of listing it on the real estate market; (3) sold said property within ten days and began the laborious process of packing up all our worldly goods and shipping them to Evanston; and (4) officially moved out on January 5th. Our move-out rendered us homeless for several weeks since we postponed our departure to Evanston until mid-February hoping for a more friendly weather forecast.  (I know what you are thinking. Who in the hell moves to Chicagoland in February?! Hmm, maybe that’s why we got a good deal on the condo.)

January in Evanston (but they are worth it.)

I decided to document my exile in daily three-sentence posts. Well, that didn’t last past the second day. And I’m incapable of keeping my words to three sentences. What follows are accounts of some days.

Day 1.  Move Out Day. 

Unmitigated madness. But to imply this was the first day of unmitigated madness, would be a mischaracterization. That label belongs to November 26, the day before Thanksgiving when we accepted the contract offer on the sale of our townhouse. After some negotiation, the buyers gave us forty days to vacate (their original timeline was twenty-four). The sorting, donating, and packing was interspersed with a myriad of social commitments. Due to the suddenness of the decision to move north to Chicagoland, I felt it incumbent upon me to meet face-to-face with long-time friends to share our news. My husband urged implementing an Irish Goodbye Strategy to avoid lengthy farewells. Given my pathological relationship addiction and my propensity to be a people pleaser, that strategy was not an option for me.

Festival of the Trees at OMA with Ann

 Back to moving day. Arising at 5:15 a.m., I quickly realized our packing was woefully incomplete. Food in the pantry and refrigerator had yet to be evacuated; bathrooms and closets still housed drugs, hygiene items, and clothes. And then there were the clothes hangers. They kept multiplying. I must have a hanger addiction. I’m certain I cleared out at least a hundred of those velvet, non-slip hangers.  

The last time I engaged in such a dramatic move was ten years ago in 2015 when we downsized from a house in Maitland, Florida to a townhouse in Baldwin Park, Orlando. I was 62 and the distance was 8.6 miles. I’m now 72 and the distance is 1216 miles. Age + distance = exhaustion.

 In the early days of packing, items were carefully sorted and boxes appropriately labeled. On moving day, random items were conjoined in whatever box or garbage bag happened to be close at hand. My 76-year-old husband lifted, toted, and transported suitcases and boxes all day long to our temporary digs. He must have made six trips searching for dumpsters to deposit our accumulated garbage and recycling (our bins were filled to the max). “How could we have anything left to discard?!” I wailed to my husband. “Good Will already suggested you open your own thrift store.”

 The movers were schedule to arrive at 10am. Our housecleaner was booked for noon. The housekeeper arrived at 11:00 a.m., the movers at 12:30 p.m., and the buyers at 2:00 p.m. for a final walk-through. Jim and I escaped to Shake Shack for a burger and a milk shake, leaving our realtor in charge. It was a good decision.

An Empty Townhouse at the end of the day

 By 5:30 p.m., twelve hours later, Jim and I, glasses of chilled Russian River Chardonay in hand, were enjoying the waning sunset from the wrap-around porch of our borrowed condo. Disposing of the overlooked items now littering yet another garage could wait until the morrow.

Day 3: A Posthumous Benediction

 I’m not a minimalist nor am I a maximalist. I felt like I had just the right amount of stuff. But moving 2,000 square feet of stuff into a 1,400 square foot space meant finding new homes for my stuff. It was quite a revelation that my children didn’t want most of it. “We have our own stuff,” was the refrain I heard from the families of our two sons and daughter. So, Goodwill Industries became the designated beneficiary for our leftovers. Given our time constraints I barely cast a backwards glance as the casualties of our household purge made their way to the Goodwill closest to our home. 

 By day three of our post-move exile, a pang of regret niggled its way into my consciousness as I pondered my cavalier treatment of the discarded objects from our Baldwin Park lives. I decided the abandoned bags and boxes of clothes, beach toys, Fiesta ware, bookshelves, and fairly new printer deserved a posthumous benediction.

“May these items, which we mostly loved, bring joyful use to you and your family.” This retroactive blessing gave me a way to honor the things that helped make my house a home.

Part 2 of Finding Your Sass After Seventy to follow.

 P.S. click here for details if news of our move is new to you-