Early in the packing process, nothing went into a box without my thinking about the last time I had used the item. If I couldn't remember, it got donated. If it had been a long time, it got donated. The move was an opportunity to de-clutter.

With tools, the choices were pretty easy. We don't have sheep, so none of the clippers or taggers were needed. We were giving up the land and barn, fences and sheds, so post hole diggers and the extra big pipe wrench, the gear puller and one chainsaw went to people who could use them. I can borrow the items if I have need.

Because we were making regular trips to the dump, we recycled a lot. Broken machinery pieces went to the metal pile, but so did household things like pins or clips. Paper went into blue bags. Tires that might have fit a piece of machinery went to be recycled.

We have a lawn tractor, so I kept one grease gun. We have trees so I kept the long-handled pruner and the battery-operated chain saw. We have gardens to use the shovels in. We have eavestroughs to clean, so a long ladder came. But the second long ladder with the bent foot did not. I am not fixing high eavestrough in the near future.

With papers, I sifted carefully, very early on a day I was alert. I worried that if I went at it with any distractions, something important would get thrown. Crucial items went to the safety deposit box. Other stuff got packed in banker's boxes, secure and ready to go back in the metal cabinet. When I find the key. I was not as careful about where I stowed the container of keys. Those boxes sit secure in a closet until I unpack that key.

Thing is, as the move got closer, my time got scarce. There was too much left on the last weekend. I opened a drawer of my dresser, the one with elastics and coins and jewelry polishing cloth and pins and beaded necklaces. I dumped it into a plastic tray and packed it into a box to sort later. A couple other trays of stuff were also packed into that box as is. I didn't have energy or time to declutter that stuff.

However, that is the one box that got opened upside down. The clothes that cushioned the bottom of the box, things that ended up on top, have been put away. The beaded necklaces have found a spot. But I have a box with a whole bunch of stuff in the bottom that I need to sift.

I can't dump the box into the drawer it came from because my husband's socks are there. Which is a good thing. I do want to sort the junk. But every time I look into the box, I walk away. I just don't have the energy, and there are so many boxes of useful things still to unpack and details of the new house to learn.

We've lived in the house for a week now. The things I haven't learned to use, like the hot tub, are not essential. The things I haven't found I haven't needed, except a large white bowl. Christmas decorations are happy to wait in their labeled box. Could the rest of the unpacked boxes be donated as is?

At this point, I have become aware how hard it is to de-clutter. It is so hard to let go of stuff. We cling to things that are familiar, that we like to look at now and again.  Stuff triggers memory. We look, and we see pieces of our lives.

Some pieces of life are important--people who we are close to, accomplishments we are proud of, things we needed to learn. More are trivial and transient. Both make us who we are.

Outside, the yard is cluttered with yellow and orange leaves. Some of these bits of life will blow away, but many I am sweeping into the garden for mulch and to improve the quality of the soil. Inside the house, some of the stuff will get carried away, and that which doesn't will, I hope, nourish life in this new-to-us home.

Cathy Hird lives on the shore of Georgian Bay.