Wake Me When It's Over...

I wish I would remember to take "before" pictures. Our house was absolute complete chaos. I do have this picture that Jamie took of me. I was beginning to lose my mind and found a happy place with lots of blankets, pillows, and wine.

That was yesterday. Today our house became nothing but stacks of boxes as far as the eye could see. HOW in the WORLD did we accumulate so much STUFF I ask you. HOW?? It's mortifying.

But it is all much more manageable. We sold a few more things, removed a lot of furniture, and even got some of the boxes of stuff out of the house and into the car ready to drive over to the hospice thrift shop in the morning after a jog. We have most of the rest of the big furniture leaving tomorrow as well! All that's left to do is pack up the rest of the kitchen and my art/craft stuff. We do have a few more boxes of things we've decided to store after all (we kept another box of sentimental stuff --my wine gadgets and Bowie wall clock were saved!-- and some kitchen stuff). So I fail at being a minimalist/following specific commands given by God (what else is new...) but at least when we move we will only need one of those little Uhaul trailers and not a whole truck! So that's something.

Today I received a package from my pen-friend The Snail Mailer. She sent me an awesome journal (it's mail-themed, woo!) and some notecards! Which is good because I'm out of notecards. Also I didn't have a journal-journal yet. I have a sketchbook, a commonplace book (and one to replace my current one since I only have a few pages left), a prayer journal, a travel log, this blog thing, and now a diary! Oh, I also keep mini-journals for my Peace Corps friend, Cate. So much for packing light. Hey, it all fits in my one designated crate! So what if that crate weighs more than my suitcase? It still takes up less space! ;) I am a serious papyrophiliac (everything sounds better in latin). I gave away all of my craft stuff without blinking an eye but I couldn't bring myself to toss my paper scraps... I'm actually storing them... apparently no one appreciates a good paper scrap like I do!

Still to-do:

• Get rid of stuff
• Get prescription refilled (need more inhalers for asthma)
• Get Verizon plan switched (we will be sharing a cell phone)
• Finish painting promised canvasses for the bookkeeping office at my old job
• Finish storing stuff
• Make that coloring book page for my mom's classes (may or may not get around to this)
• Visit everyone we know like it's the last time we'll ever see them again
• Clean the whole apartment/turn in the keys
• Figure out how to eat with no appliances or kitchen stuff (our friends are taking good care of us so far)
• See if we can fit everything in the car or not
• Practice driving that stupid manual transmission vehicle we're taking
• Try not to freak out about every little thing

It's really not that bad. We have 2 working days left. Then on Friday Jamie gives a talk, we have a wedding rehearsal, then a wedding the next day, then we leave on Sunday. Holy crap this is happening waaaaay too fast. Maybe it IS that bad... Well, we shall see. If I have to pack those canvasses with me and mail the finished work to the bookkeepers so be it. I hate leaving things unfinished.

Super Mega Ultra Blowout Liquidation Sale!!

We have a lot of stuff. Like, a disturbing amount of stuff. One of our friends was like "Where the heck did you put all this?" and I honestly couldn't tell her. Here I was thinking I was a high and mighty anti-consumerist and then all of my junk comes crawling out of hiding to taunt me.

So, we decided to sell it all and donate the proceeds rather than keep it to move across the country in a year. We did keep a few "extra" things (our rule for "extra" is this: if we aren't going to use it during this year of {vaga}bonding, it goes), which are tucked away in my parent's basement, happily being borrowed by friends and family, or in boxes designated for re-gifting. Despite this, we still didn't manage to keep enough stuff to win the approval of either of our mothers.

After sorting out what we wanted to keep, we piled everything in the living room & around the house, set up a donation jar, and opened it up to our friends and family for a free-for-all. Take a gander at our garbage:

Today people kept asking if this was hard for us. Jamie seems unfazed by all of it. I, on the other hand, am much more sentimental, and yesterday was difficult for me. I actually came to tears more than once over some things; mostly gifts, knick-knacks, items with a history but no real practical purpose (some of the stuff I hang on to I don't even like that much). It was like an episode of hoarders, except that I don't have a big enough problem to make it on TV. Jamie kept telling me this was all my idea and then I would sob some more. But I got it out of my system, and I woke up this morning mentally and emotionally prepared to see 90% of my belongings march out the door. I have been vastly disappointed. We sold a lot of stuff, but there's still a lot of stuff left, and our sale is only open another hour (it's been slow... as evidenced by my having plenty of time to blog).


I must interject with this clip. I love this movie, mostly because it has David Bowie in it, but also because of scenes like this:

"I HAVE TO SAVE TOBY!!" Classic. For those of you sad people unfamiliar with the film, Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is on a mission to save her little brother from the Goblin King, Jareth (David Bowie). Jareth sets up traps along the way, and her comfortable little room in her home with all of her things is one of those traps to distract her from her goal to save Toby. Luckily she escapes this trap like all of the others and goes on to take over the Goblin City, meet the greatest challenge of all of turning down David Bowie (I mean, defeating Jareth), and have a happily ever after with her brother safely at home and all of her friends around her in a big muppet party. It's great.

I never want to have this many objects to worry about again in my life. I don't want to feel like I'm literally uprooting myself in order to relocate. I don't want to have to hem and haw about what is important enough to pack in a box, cart down the road or across the country, and unpack again. My roots should be based solely on the people around me, not because I don't want to have to pack up all my crap. And really it's not so much the inconvenience of moving that motivates me to remove all of this stuff from my life (although that is a strong factor), but the weight of it. Why do I feel a need to accumulate all of this stuff in the first place? All it does is keep me distracted and bogged down, like my computer when I was 10 and didn't know better, when I downloaded every little thing with hidden trojans and viruses entwining themselves in the poor machine's memory. I should mention that gifts are another animal entirely, and I need to continue to flesh out my thoughts on their place in all of this as well, but that is for another post.

This "Great Schlep" has been a long time coming. We still have enough stuff stored to fill Jamie's car three times over, but it's a start, and I intend to continue down this path if I can. I will save my rough history with minimalism for another post as well.

Anyway, even though we still have over half of our things to deal with (and I still don't feel that sense of freedom that those crazy minimalists are always talking about), we found homes for a lot of our things and our friends and family generously donated over $1200 for the homeless and poor in Paradise and Chico, and that is something. =)