It's all about the piles

I don't know what my new life will be like once we get to Honduras, but right now it seems to be about sorting. That and studying Spanish fill what I used to call "spare time" - the blocks of time in my life when I could do fun things like bird-watching or spend a leisurely couple of hours at the gym.
Now, there's only sorting and Spanish, although they have their own charms. Newly able to understand at least most of what I read in the Honduran on-line newspaper I've been checking out, I'm very happy to be finally making good on years of empty promises to myself that I would learn Spanish. But I've been hard at it for almost two months now and taking a two-hour private lesson every week as well, so no surprise that my birding time has suffered. So it goes.
The demands of sorting are multi-layered. First, you sort just to put like with like - tools over here, art materials over there, miscellaneous (and oh, there's so much miscellaneous) over by the wall.
Then you sort the newly sorted stuff into smaller piles: This one to store; this one to give away to family; this one for donation; this one to ditch. I'm an aggressive ditcher and my partner is right on the edge of being a hoarder, so you can imagine how pleasant that aspect of things has been.
The out-bound stuff then gets loaded into the back of my truck and off it goes to whatever the final destination, freeing up space in the basement for the next round of sorting. And on and on it goes. I feel the pressure of our Jan. 15 departure quite acutely at this point, but I've had to be careful not to be too efficient, or the next thing you know I've given away something we'll actually need between now and then.
The cabinet that housed our wine glasses and liquor went on its way today, up-Island to its new home in my son's house. The homeless liquor bottles are stacked on the floor in the dining room now, so much in our way that it's as if they're daring us to drink them up before we fly away. Well, if that's the way it has to be.