Our game plan to move back to Utah at the beginning of May is well underway. Because we are hoping to move overseas next year, this seems like the perfect time to downsize in a dramatic way. We are selling or donating all of our furniture, many personal items, clothes, lots of books, kitchen items, picture frames, bathroom items, home decorations, and so on. We are digitizing our letters, pictures, yearbooks, financial papers, medical records, and yearbooks and then tossing the originals. We are backing all of this up on an external hard drive and on the cloud.
Sometimes it is easy to focus on the things we are giving up, but what are we keeping? Which items are so important that we feel compelled to make room for them?
Yesterday, the whole family got into the spirit of things and we filled 5 suitcases with the bare minimum. We figured that 5 suitcases are about as much space as we’ll have in a minivan. Here’s what we chose:
Vital Information. Birth certificates, passports, immunization records, social security cards, and other vital documents are currently in a safe, but before we move we will put them in something more portable.
Clothes. We have already picked our closets clean and we only own clothes that we wear often. Ross and I each have a suitcase and we were pleased to find that the entire contents of our wardrobes including accessories and shoes fit into one suitcase with room to spare. The children’s clothes all fit into one suitcase.
Memorabilia. We included a few items that hold sentimental value.
- Baby blessing outfits
- The first outfits we brought our children home in as infants
- A bit of hair from their first haircuts
- My young women medallion
- Ross’s baptism bag
- Our diplomas
- A book written for us by a mutual friend
- A couple of paintings I did in high school
- A commemorative plate from Ross’s mission
- A conductors baton made by Ross’s grandpa
- The shirt I wore when Ross proposed, and the ring box.
- A cross stitch made for me by my mom
All of that fits into a small cardboard box that takes up half a suitcase.
Books. We each included a few books that are very meaningful to us.
- The Book of Mormon
- The Bible
- Moby Dick
- Three Cormac Mcarthy books
- The Chronicles of Narnia
- Several children’s books
This was pretty difficult! We have lots of books that we love. We chose books that have sentimental value. Many of our other books are available in ebook form and eventually we will invest in a kindle and rebuild our library digitally.
Christmas. Holiday items may not seem like a big deal with this type of downsizing, but with three small children we both felt the need for some continuity with our family traditions. We got rid of our Christmas tree, stockings, lights, garlands, bows, and wrapping paper, but we kept some of the most special parts of Christmas.
We are keeping our Christmas tree ornaments. Ross’s grandma sent Ross a new ornament every year until he was 18, and now his mom sends our kids a new ornament each year as well. It is a great tradition! We just had to keep all of those special ornaments! My favorite ornament is the Christmas corsage that I wore in my high school choir and we kept that as well. We also have a lovely hand crocheted angel tree topper from Ross’s aunt.
We are keeping our Nativity hats. This year, we created several fleece animal hats including donkeys, sheep, goats and cows. We also have gold garland halos for the angels. We want to keep these for each year’s nativity scene.
Kitchen. We will try to fit our cast iron skillet and our Bosch mixer.
Decor. Although we are getting rid of all of our picture frames, we are keeping all of the photographs and cuttings.
Personal Items. Ross will take his cologne, cuff links and a few other small items. I will take my favorite pieces of jewelry, a small makeup bag (cleanser, moisturizer, powder, mascara), thermal spray, and my straightener. We will take my cutting scalpel, our phones and chargers, and our external hard drive. We will also take our baseball mits and a ball.
Toys. Each of our kids has a very small backpack. They can choose whatever they want that will fit in their backpack. We will take out the stuffing of all any stuffed animals they want to take and then re-stuff them in Utah.
There you have it! That is what we are planning on taking to Utah with us. Some of it is more important than others, but I think we’ve narrowed all of our belongings down to a reasonable level. With this amount of things we can move freely about the country and our journey overseas will be much simpler. Whatever we aren’t bringing we will either replace when we get there, or learn to live without.
The Coughanour Chronicles 