It’s amazing the things you find when you move. Things you’ve forgotten about or don’t use. Things that you pack and promise yourself that you’ll deal with later.

You’d think that it would be easier to move when you don’t have to take any furniture, which is what we thought when we’d arranged to lease out our condo fully furnished. Wrong.

Okay, so you may not be moving anytime soon, but here is an interesting exercise: Go into your bathroom – look in the drawers and in the cupboard under the sink. If I was a betting man, I’d wager to say that, based on our recent experience, there are a few of the following:

• one or 20 of those dental floss samplers from the dentist – you know, the ones you won’t use at home because you are saving them for when you travel, but in reality you’d have to travel for an entire year and floss three times a day to use them up fully
  

  Got floss?

• a bushel of hotel soaps and shampoos that you nicked at check out figuring you paid for them and planned to use again at some point – but never have. Hell, you likely even have full-sized bottles of shampoos, conditioners and lotions with only ounces left because you bought a new and improved formula
• a small pharmacy of pain killers, cold avoiders, ointments, lozenges and a smattering of pills in ancient plastic prescription bottles for that long-ago-something-or-other that made you go to the doctor or, worse yet, the walk-in (and wait forever) clinic

If you’ve found any of these things, ask yourself why are you keeping them — as we did after moving them to four different houses over the years. What is in many of us that makes us reluctant to clear out things that we aren’t using?

This past month has been an exercise in tossing, using up or donating. When we leave for Argentina in about 70 days, we vow to have eliminated all the useless (to us) things that we’ve been lugging around for years. Very liberating!

And don’t get me started on what might be lurking in your kitchen cupboards. Food that you won’t eat and appliances that you never use anymore.

Could it really be that bad?

Here’s a tip from your uncle Chris: canned goods DO expire. As it turns out, we had cans (yes, more than one) of cream of celery soup that expired a mere eight years ago. It, and others, are now safely in the trash.

Leave your thoughts and comments below.