#24 April 17, 2021 Nomad Life: How We Got Here continued

 Update today:  two more Saturdays here in Harvest, Alabama.  The weather has been a chilly spring and beautiful for flowers and birds and for walking outside that we do often.  We know that hot days are coming here and we really enjoy this cooler weather ranging from 45-75 degrees.  Our oldest son, Eric was born in 1985 in Frankfurt, Germany Army Hospital.  For me, it was a most beautiful and difficult day of growth and love in our family.  I'm so thankful to celebrate Eric's birthday now with him and his wife Erin.  They bring me tears of joy and keep me ever thankful to God for their kindness and friendship.

Last fall as I began my year-long plan to sell items from our house, Darrell would ask me why I was beginning so soon.  I just knew that I wanted to get started and be in the motion of moving items out that were just holding space.  Once the first furniture sold and the real estate agent offered a walk-through and estimate of our house, we were faced with the possibility of a faster pace to downsize and start living with less things.

In the few days that we took to decide to go ahead and sell our house, and I was selling items fast through fb marketplace, Darrell was building out his plan of downsized organization.  He was amazing and techinical in his very unique ways.  He had an idea of finding crates that would fit into our truck bed like puzzle pieces and work like drawers to organize like items.  About this same time, he had taken the truck in to have a locking bed cover installed.  He spent time online finding the crates to match the measurements of height, width and depth of the truck bed.  The crates came in and we figured out how they would fit and stack in the truck, and we put them in our living room to begin collecting the items we would be keeping.  In addition to these eight crates, Darrell also purchased 4 sealing boxes similar to footlockers that also fit into the truck and provided us with a different kind of storage than the crates.

We designated the crates to correspond to our kitchen pantry and dishes, office, bathroom, etc.  We each took a footlocker as our own to store our off-season clothing and any other personal items.  The additional footlockers were able to have items that were too large for the crates, and items that I didn't want to get wet like quilts and pillows.  

Since we have been past the sale of our house, we have continued to discover what we don't use and what items are just holding a space.  We experience very clearly the items that we use daily, weekly and monthly.  From September 2020 to now, we have continued to remove items from our boxes and donate, give away and throw away.  

In the past month, Darrell got more interested in organizing our crates even better by measuring them in height, width and depth.  Next we looked at containers that will fit into the crates for designated items especially to do with our pantry, spices, coffee, tea and foods we eat often.  We came up with OXO brand clear containers with a sealing lid in various sizes to store items now with easier access. 

Going through this kind of tedious and helpful organization feels good in our current solutions.  I shopped and found clear modular sealing containers by rubbermaid to fit into our cooler.  It is against my former belief to throw out a perfectly good left-overs container.  I'm doing it now, and I'm enjoying the benefits of the organization and our investment in good usable containers.