Weighing the Pros and Cons of Moving

Now that my sister Patsy is in South Carolina twirling her parasol and eating barbecue, Peaches and I have decided to move into a smaller house. Not that this one is palatial, but we don’t need three bedrooms and three baths, a sun room, a living room and a dining area.

I listed it with a real estate agent the other day. Have you noticed that if you mention selling your house, everyone you know can recommend a marvelous real estate person, who is as alert as a fox terrier, persevering, determined and productive?

I have not sold a house since I left the Carmel Valley after Cuchulain, the large black-and-white cat, flung a live gopher into the bathtub when I was already in there. Somehow, this took the softness off the pastoral scene and caused me to call a moving company and return to Los Angeles where the hazards are many, but where I haven’t encountered a gopher in the bathtub.

Now that I have come this far, I don’t know if I remember how to pack all this stuff. Have you moved lately? Did you really move all the old phonograph records and those drawers of old snapshots? Why?

Really, most of the snapshots could be thrown away and just that would take a couple of weeks. I should put all of the boxes of snaps on the dining room table and sort them out according to year, or at least house or period. Then they should be pasted into albums. But would I look at them more than once a year? Would you? Might it just be better to throw them away before I put them into albums instead of waiting and then throwing away the albums?

Every time I start to paw through the snaps, I become weary and discouraged when I find eight or 10 pictures of Christmas trees with not a hint of what year it was. Why didn’t I have someone stand in front of the tree holding a calendar?

Then there are at least that many pictures of Thanksgiving tables with the golden, glazed turkey on my great-grandmother’s platter. Those are easier than the Christmas tree pictures because the cast changes a little. But it’s the same table and chairs and the same crystal and silver hurricane lamps.

Then there are books and the contents of linen closets. I am determined to throw away the one orange, one red and three yellow towels and work toward the same color scheme so that the bathrooms will be color coordinated the way it tells me to be in the magazines.

The attic is filled with boxes of tree ornaments. They, of course, will all have to be moved because I am a Christmas child and treasure each tarnished and chipped bit of folderol.

I do not need four decanters. I only need one. Really, I don’t need any because I have never decanted wine except at one of those once-a-year dinner parties. So I think I will give the four decanters to a charity, even the Murano glass one I bought in Venice. It looks as if it belongs in a house with a Spanish shawl on the piano. It’s one of those things you buy in Venice and would never buy anywhere near home.

Most of the furniture is too big for wherever I move. Most of it came from bigger rooms than the ones I have now. The coffee table used to be my grandmother’s library table until I had the legs cut down. It would be great if I wanted an inside bowling lane.

What shall I do with the pantry full of herbs and spices? I will throw them away, all of them. Several of them, I think, were my mother’s and have no more flavor than shredded crepe paper.

I have three hoses, one too large and heavy to move, one so light it ties itself into a snarl and squirts the holder; and one just right but it leaks. Probably they should all go. Then when I move, the first thing I will have to do is run to the nearest hardware store and buy a new hose.

And I have to sort out the filing cabinets.

I have finally depressed myself to the point where I am frozen into immovability. Maybe Peaches and I will just go to South Carolina and walk away from all that stuff. After all, Patsy did.