Goodbye Shack

We moved out of the Shack months ago, but yesterday we headed down to the Mid-Trail area to pay one last visit to the Shack. Although we’d moved the most pertinent things out in May when we left, little bits of Ada and Andy still lingered in the Shack: old printers, tennis rackets, and guitars. So yesterday we packed, stacked and shoved all those not so little bits into the back of Andy’s truck. As we drove back to the cabin, I started to wonder just how we managed to get so much shi-stuff into a 12x20 building.

Luckily, the new shed has reached a point in its construction that we could move a bit of the truck’s contents directly into that space. Still the vast majority of bins and bags needed to brought inside and dealt with. For a couple hours yesterday we made a stab at going through the boxes, sorting it into toss piles and thrift piles, condensing bins. But it gets old so quickly, doesn’t it and there is so very much of it. To think, in my parents’ garage, there are still containers filled with stuff I haven’t looked at since college.

How do two people, each a mere 25 years in age end up with so much stuff? I just don’t get it.

But somehow, stuff piles up. Homes come and go. When you take a moment to think about it, it can be pretty amazing to think of all you’ve seen, all you’ve received, all you’ve done and learned. Shutting the door to the Shack yesterday afternoon, it was hard to believe we’d spent so much time in the cramped little, poorly insulated space.

But the Shack was truly a happy, humble home for us. The kind of place where you didn’t have to feel guilty that all your worldly belongings were still shoved into plastic containers. Where you didn’t worry about housekeeping because even in the best of circumstances the Shack doesn’t look too hot. A place to be until everything sorted itself out.

Goodbye Shack. May you make a cozy home for someone else very soon.