Moments of horror and irritation in packing up house. Excerpts from my life this week:
– it seems like such a small apartment. How did all this crap fit in here? What is all this crap, anyway?
– subsequent regret about ever having unpacked possessions 3 years ago. Momentary consideration of which objects have been used or appreciated in the last 3 years.
– CASSETTE tapes? VIDEO tapes? 3.5 inch diskettes? Wow. The horrors of old media.
– After the parrot ate the cd rack, we switched over to cd booklets. For some reason, though, the cd gem cases are still in boxes which we can’t bring ourselves to throw out.
– Why do we have a VHS tape of “Herbie goes Bananas”?
– two 5 lb weights for physical therapy of the shoulder. 'Nuff said. Minor irritation felt at their possession.
– Powerbook 170. Broken but ALMOST working. Sentimental value-- must keep.
– Two pair of pink lawn flamingoes bought as wedding gifts but not yet mailed. Must mail.
– LPs. Lots of them. 'Nuff said.
– a) Boxes full of old comic books and bicycling/skateboarding-oriented magazines. b) they aren’t mine.
– many, many bicycles.
– many, many books. Large, heavy glossily illustrated art books.
–Bureaucratic/ academic lifestyle accumulates lots of PAPER things, which need to be looked at and evaluated-- important paper or not?
– Thanks for the very large world atlas for Christmas, mom (actually is a very cool atlas, but does not fit into my box plan)
Alleviating factors:
– most of furniture is from Ikea and will deconstruct to something flat-- purposeful decision upon last move. Slowly understanding nature of grad student lifestyle and planning ahead accordingly.
– lots of time.
– Have hit age where I feel ok about purging things accumulated during college years.
– thank God we decided to not decorate with indoor plants this time.
Horrors yet to come:
– How much kim chee can we HAVE in the fridge?
– Will I come to terms with the fact that I will ever be a size 10 for the rest of my adult life? Will the old clothes finally go to Goodwill?
– “No, we don’t need to rent the ramp. We can get stuff up to the 48” high truck bed."
– spackling and patching parrot-damaged woodwork.
–the horrors of packing kitchens-- esp. glassware.
A-freaking-men. I’m in the middle of moving right now. It bites the big one. I can’t believe how much crap I have, and this is after going through my stuff and throwing away two large garbage bags full of stuff just a month ago.
I’ll be in the front of the uhaul and pulling out of the driveway next friday. Today was my first real boute of moving jitters. I live in a one bedroom apartment and have at least 20 medium boxes of stuff. Where the hell did it all come from? And I’ve already thrown away everything I’m not taking with me. It’s good to know there are other people out there going through the same sort of pain as I am. My biggest problem? I have 2 cats, 2 chinchillas, and 8 adult angel fish that I need to somehow get from Florida to Virginia with me. The cats and chinchillas aren’t so hard, it’s the fish that have me stumped.
Oh, I know you how you feel. In my case, EVERYONE in my family is moving sometime in the next 2-3 months - my sister and her family to a new home; parents out to sister’s new home; me from my parents’ into an apartment. This means not only to I have to figure out how to fit the possessions I gathered during my adult years into the apartment (actually might not be too bad, I’ve already done a lot of weeding in the past), but I also have to cull through a lifetime’s worth of stuff stashed away in my parents’ attic and basement. Ooh, penmanship exercises from second grade? How lovely! :: grits teeth and brings out the shovel ::
One of my favourite games is a little game I call “Chuck it, keep it, chuck it.” That’s where I take all of the scrap paper, newsprint, magazines, ATM records, and sales receipts, and sort them into two piles. I win if the “chuck it” pile is at least three times as big as the “keep it” pile, or alternatively if the paper in the “chuck it” pile fills more than one green garbage bag.
It’s the only, and I mean only, part of moving that I enjoy.
I feel your pain. I’m moving on Monday, but I’ve been packing gradually for a few weeks now. I’ll get two or three boxes done and then get frustrated and quit. As moving day approaches, I’ve taken to playing the “what’s worse than packing?” game to entertain and motivate myself. Root canals = worse than packing. Being mugged at gunpoint, I would imagine, would be worse. A roach infestation… yep, that’s worse…
Learning that Ikea furniture is much sturdier than it looks, woof. Clever designs. . .
Lynn, chewed but thoroughly. Through the bottom thin shelf-- came home to a pile of cds on the floor and a happy bird munching away.
