Canmore ... for now - 51° 05' 03" N 115° 22' 07" W

Detach yourself from reading this blog for a moment and look around you.

You're likely at home, surrounded by things that you've spent the last twenty-plus years gathering.  A comfortable living room setup; perhaps a TV that you (at one time) were particularly pleased to have.  A bookshelf (or two) full of books you have read.  A kitchen with a coffeemaker that produces your morning nectar; a few small appliances that you use on occasion and a toaster you are happy with; mixing bowls, cookie trays, roasting pans, and a whole drawer full of mashers, peelers, salad tongs and specialized utensils.  There's your bed; that whole closet and chest of drawers full of clothing. You have winter jackets, summer jackets, sports equipment.  How about shoes all the shoes you have?  Whew, quite a few when you stop to consider them, hey?  Now, how about tools?  How about sports equipment? How about table cloths, place mats, tea towels, sheets, bath and hand towels, ...

Now, imagine that you have to get rid of all this stuff in the next two months.

Tax records and other important documents are ending up here!

Piles are being created for friends (who have let us know they love a particular piece of artwork that we have).  Piles are being created for relatives who have kindly offered to store that box with hiking/climbing/cycling/ski gear that we know we might need on future visits.  Piles are being created for the thrift shop.  Piles are being created for the trash bin.

Vases.  How did we end up with so many?  Where are they going to go?

All these beautiful, marvellous things that we aquired when we handed over hard-earned money, then gleefully carried home and placed next to all the OTHER THINGS we bought and brought home ... we now have to deal with them all.  Whether we used it once, use it every day or had it gifted to us - it now cannot stay.  The plan is to select a very small subset of clothing (think: maybe two dufflebags full), kitchen goods and tools; then carry it - 23 kilograms at a time (as per airplane luggage allowance) - to France.  Most of our 2,800 square feet of stuff will not be getting on the plane with us.

Kijiji (the local online buy-and-sell) and Facebook Marketplace have seen some furious activity-level increases from the Collins household.  We are also discovering that things we thought were very valuable are nowhere near as liquid as we thought.  Furniture, tools, sports equipment, fully-functional computer bits ... all not attracting the attention that we thought they might.  Much of what we own will be headed for a thrift store.

Our life is changing ... and with it, what we deem essential for our needs and wants.