Moving, again
Jun. 8th, 2017 08:25 pmI'm gearing up to move again; now that I don't have to stay in the school district*, I'm looking at a couple of places that are smaller, cheaper, closer to work, and ideally a little less damp.
But of course the idea of touching every single item I own, again, is incredibly intimidating.
So I decided to try packing one box a day.
There's quite a lot of low-hanging fruit -- at least ten boxes that I never got around to unpacking two years ago when we moved here. I may very well bog down when it comes to starting from scratch. But here's two days' worth of progress:
Day 1
Packed: One box from the bedroom. Mostly books and miscellaneous desky stuff.
Discarded: One bag of books and three bags of clothes to Goodwill. Half a recycle bin's worth of paper.
Find of the day: A bunch of little spiral notebooks from the pre-Iowa days, when I used to get Saturday mornings alone to write. Much probably-doomed writing in there, including the title of a Discworld story ("Hard-Boiled Egg") and the summary of a Sherlock story ("Suicide by vampire. At least, that was the plan.") and about 500 words of a story I was going to write about how in an Alpha/Omega universe the end of fertility must be heralded by an Omegapause ("Everybody around him was so goddamned fucking young.").
Day 2
Packed: One box of cookbooks and other non-fragile kitcheny stuff.
Discarded: Another bag of books ready to go to Goodwill, and a garbage bag full of things which stop being edible after being left in a box on the living room floor for two years.
Find of the day: So that's where all the AA batteries were.
* Let's just take a moment to let that sink in. Barring really strange circumstances, I am finished with school districts. School districts will never again play a role in my real estate decisions. I am no longer the parent of a public school student. I have attended my last teacher conference, and probably also my last progress report.
But of course the idea of touching every single item I own, again, is incredibly intimidating.
So I decided to try packing one box a day.
There's quite a lot of low-hanging fruit -- at least ten boxes that I never got around to unpacking two years ago when we moved here. I may very well bog down when it comes to starting from scratch. But here's two days' worth of progress:
Day 1
Packed: One box from the bedroom. Mostly books and miscellaneous desky stuff.
Discarded: One bag of books and three bags of clothes to Goodwill. Half a recycle bin's worth of paper.
Find of the day: A bunch of little spiral notebooks from the pre-Iowa days, when I used to get Saturday mornings alone to write. Much probably-doomed writing in there, including the title of a Discworld story ("Hard-Boiled Egg") and the summary of a Sherlock story ("Suicide by vampire. At least, that was the plan.") and about 500 words of a story I was going to write about how in an Alpha/Omega universe the end of fertility must be heralded by an Omegapause ("Everybody around him was so goddamned fucking young.").
Day 2
Packed: One box of cookbooks and other non-fragile kitcheny stuff.
Discarded: Another bag of books ready to go to Goodwill, and a garbage bag full of things which stop being edible after being left in a box on the living room floor for two years.
Find of the day: So that's where all the AA batteries were.
* Let's just take a moment to let that sink in. Barring really strange circumstances, I am finished with school districts. School districts will never again play a role in my real estate decisions. I am no longer the parent of a public school student. I have attended my last teacher conference, and probably also my last progress report.