The packing supervisor<\/i><\/p>\n
The packing supervisor<\/i><\/p>\n
One set of obstacles cleared. On to the next. Anyone have any advice about moving a dog and a cat cross country? <\/p>\n
Now that we know where we’ll be living (provided the inspection goes well on Tuesday, which we expect it will), I’ve begun to mentally arrange furniture and paint walls. I was thinking a cool olive shade in the entry hall and up the stairs and in the upstairs hallway, and a lighter cool green or maybe even a pale greenish gray in the living room and dining room. Now, though, I’m thinking about Portland weather and the way the light will be there, and wondering if I want warmer, brighter colors to balance out the gray overcast that I expect I’ll be seeing out the windows in much of the rainy season. None of this thinking is all that useful, since of course I won’t be choosing paint colors until we’ve lived in the space for a week or so and I’ve seen firsthand what the light looks like. I’m just thinking about paint colors to avoid thinking about the basement. Specifically, all the accumulated stuff that has to be sorted out in the basement.<\/p>\n
There’s the stuff that we’ll clearly keep. There’s the stuff that we’ll clearly toss. The stuff we’ll clearly donate. But then there are the things I know I don’t want but that I feel an obligation to keep–like the box of my childhood dolls that my mom saved and gave to me recently. They weren’t anything I felt especially attached to as a kid or now, but somehow the idea of not keeping them feels cold-blooded. As I type this, now I’m thinking…yeah…let the dolls go. There are boxes and boxes of things like that, though. Boxes of family obligation. If I don’t keep my grandmother’s not-all-that-special glassware, it doesn’t mean I loved her any less. And yet… This is how we came to have a basement full of boxes. Billy travels light, so it’s almost all my stuff and it’s almost all family stuff I feel guilty about not wanting. I’ve moved most of it twice now. Some of it three times. Without opening those boxes.<\/p>\n
I don’t want to be lugging these things<\/i> around with me for the rest of my life. It’s so easy to say, “Right. If it isn’t beautiful or useful, it goes.” So much harder when you actually have to head down to that basement and sort through it all. But if by moving we’re paring down, simplifying, streamlining our life to bring it closer to the life we want to live as a family, I have to do the same with the material clutter I’ve built up around me. Not all the clutter–I like layers, I like piles and clusters, and that’s fine. But the things I don’t love or use…I can’t keep moving them from house to house, just because it’s hard to admit that I don’t want the furniture from my childhood dollhouse or the …well…I can’t even come up with another example right now. I’ve ignored that stuff for so long I’m not even sure what’s down there. <\/p>\n
Advice welcome. I’m not looking forward to this. Or, rather, I’m looking forward to being done and having lightened the load. I’m not looking forward to the process that will get us there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The packing supervisor One set of obstacles cleared. On to the next. Anyone have any advice about moving a dog and a cat cross country? Now that we know where we’ll be living (provided the inspection goes well on Tuesday, …<\/p>\n