I don't know why I don't play board games anymore. I simply can't remember the last time I pulled out the Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly or Scrabble board.
There was a time when the board game was one of the pillars of our social life. We'd get together with friends for dinner and often end the evening with some game or other.
But that doesn't happen anymore.
I found the games while I was packing boxes preparing for our move. They were covered in dust on a shelf in the basement having been neglected the better part of a decade.
After living in the same home for almost 20 years, I'm finding packing to be a bit of a jaunt along paths of memories not often travelled, not in a melancholic or nostalgic way, rather it's been gratifying to think both about how fortunate I've been through my life and about how much has changed over the past 20 years.
When I bought this house, my son was two years old and my daughter not yet born. Now they're gone living their own lives in different places.
But some of their stuff is still here, and pulling it out of closets and from drawers always provokes memories of them as they played on the street and in the backyard.
It reminds me of what a great house andneighbourhood this was in which to raise a family.
When we moved here in 1990, I was not yet 30 and was just beginning my career. Now I'm pushing 50 and thinking about the end of it.
So finding cans of paint from the first time we did the living room reminded me just how much time and effort we've put into this place.
It also reminded me why I wanted to move into a brand new place with no maintenance to do.
Things have to change, and just as the Fisher Price barnyard no longer has much to do with my kids now, so many things I'm finding have little to do with the person I am now.
Why have we kept all the crap that we've got, I often wonder?
As in all houses that have been lived in for a long time, boxes of children's toys, drawers of old electronics and wiring, and bags of clothes clutter every nook and cranny.
So the move into a storage-challenged house about 40 per cent smaller than our current one has forced us to purge. And it feels great.
Give everything away, I say. Let's start fresh. And forget garage sales, everything goes for a bottle of wine.
The dining room table and chairs, my son's old bed, even the piano each went for a bottle of wine.
These things we no longer have either space or any use for; the wine, however, meets both those criteria.
I know there will be things I'll miss having when I leave, but there's no use in regretting the decisions we make.
It's time to move on, and besides we'll always have the board games - those are definitely not being tossed.
