I’ve moved a lot growing up. My dad moved up in corporate America, and each promotion felt like it came with a new town. I’ve tallied it up. This is my 20th move. (Maybe there was a few more in Flagstaff for college). But we’ll go with 20 big moves in my lifetime.
I thought I had this down pat. Sell a few things. Go through your closet. Need to have a garage sale or two. Then you pack all your things into boxes and rent the Uhaul or make a few drives – depending on how far you’re going.
This move is … nothing … like … that! This move has been piles. This pile needs to go into storage. Is it really something I need to keep for 7-10 years? This pile I need to pack into my suitcase so we can wander around Europe for 2 months. How many toys and books should we (can we) pack in a suitcase? And the last pile is shipment. We are trying to squeeze everything into 4x4x6 feet. I have it taped up on the wall. I’m still looking around my house wondering; maybe I can squeeze that into the shipment? What about this pile? Can it go too? And because part of the package I paid for was the movers to pack my stuff, I’m not boxing anything. It’s just sitting in piles in K’s bedroom. Which in some ways is nice because it’s one less thing to worry about. And in other ways it’s driving me nuts, I won’t know if I hit that 100 cubic feet until the day they pack it into boxes. And do they know how to really cram a box like I do?
Meanwhile, I spend my time just purging accumulated stuff. Where did all this stuff come from? Most of the purge is reactive. Oh, I sold that shelf? Guess I should clear it off. 4 month of selling things online and I still fret that I can shovel the rest of it out in the next 3.5 weeks. Wish me luck! The countdown continues.
This is what 109 cubic feet of stuff looks like:
German School Phoenix 