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. =)

My First 5K and the Great Schlep Part Deux!

So, I ran 3.1 miles last night without stopping to walk. WOO! And I did it in 36 minutes and 56 seconds. See? I'm number 18 out of 22... which means I wasn't last, which is another victory, haha. I'm done running 3.1 miles at a time... gonna stick to 2.5 then maybe move up again, because I thought I was going to die, and I was starting to think the race coordinators were playing a sick, sick joke when that damned finish line just would NOT show up on the horizon. Needless to say, I have some work to do. =P

In {Vaga}Bonding News, we have begun the serious work of schlepping our stuff. I spent the morning unpacking what we had stored in my parent's basement to make room for the stuff I actually want to keep (books mostly, some wedding stuff, and lots of letters & memorabilia from childhood and dating years), then Jamie & I spent a few hours gutting our bookshelves and some dark corners of the closet for things to stash away and things to sell off.

Here is what we're keeping (you can tell which ones I had qualms about keeping by the comments in parentheses):

• a suitcase each of clothing (we are packing shoes, coats and toiletries in a separate bag)
• DVDs, books, music (collector LPs, some CDs)
• my sewing machine
• my scrapbooking stuff (that stuff is expensive and I use it all the time, I'm not replacing it)
• our computers (because we need that much computing power to watch netflix and surf the web)
• some things from the wedding/memorabilia/scrapbooks/letters
• Christmas/holiday decorations (Those ornaments have a lot of meaning to me... yes, even the dinosaur ones we got on a whim two years ago)
• my rat cage (it's a beaut, and I want it full of fuzzy ratties again next year!!)
• a box of art stuff
• a bag of math stuff
• a laptop/drawing tablet
• an Asus tablet
• some camping stuff
• a car

Everything else must go!! It's a little nerve-wracking (I'm not looking forward to re-collecting my spices and wine gadgets) and sometimes like tearing off an enormous band-aid (no, not my David Bowie wall clock!! It is precious to me!) but I think it will be a relief once we have it all GONE.

I can't believe we will be outta here in like a week and a half! Not even! =D CRAZY! I'm super excited... also anxious that our pile of things to take care of is not ever going to get taken care of, but all we can do is try.

This weekend we are having a big sale to get rid of our extra stuff! We will be donating the proceeds. I'm also selling off a bunch of art, but we're keeping those proceeds. And we always accept donations in the form of gas cards, meals at restaurants, and other fun things that cost money. ;)

Let the Great Schlep of 2012 Commence!

It still feels like it's just the weekend. My unemployed status hasn't really sunk in. Plus I'm stressing myself out with all the stuff I think I have to do. One thing I did accomplish was pre-packing my suitcase! What an adventure!

All of my clothing as of this morning, before the Great Schlep:

Holy Sweatshops, Batman!

And after:

Look! It all fits into my awesome purple suitcase! We are packing shoes and toiletries separately. Also I would like to brag that the clothing in that one purple suitcase are for all seasons (I should say, all California seasons...)

I didn't get a before pic of my closet, but I've gotten rid of like 2/3 of my clothing in the last few weeks, so just picture that.

What remains of my dress/coat collection and my scarf/belt collection. 

Undergarments not shown... ;) but they were culled as well.

One major thing I've cut (even though I chopped the number of clothing items in my closet by half, I still have something for almost any occasion) is makeup. I've decided for a number of reasons to go without:

• I need to replace my mascara and I'm too lazy to go buy it. And without mascara, what's the point of everything else?
• I HATE HATE HATE marketing ploys for makeup. Even the eco-friendly "alternative" cosmetic companies have taglines that read "We aren't trying to change the way you look... just the way you see yourself." BALONEY. I don't like that I have to paint my face to feel beautiful. That's baloney.
• The eco-friendly alternative companies are WAAAAY expensive. I will never pay $20 for a bottle of mascara. And I will never buy into the scam that you need to replace that mascara every few months. I call baloney on that one as well.

So now I'm shorn and makeupless, with far fewer options to dress myself with. At least I'm still wearing girl clothes. I am truly blessed to have a man who lets me throw out my makeup and cut off all of my hair (he does draw the line at ponchos, sadly).

Well, I feel as though I've ranted against the machine enough for one day! In the coming week I'll be packing away some sentimental crap that no one really wants (it's for posterity!) and selecting a few things that I'll need borrowers for, and deciding what to actually pack with me in the car.