Packing, packing, packing.

Well, we thought it’d never end, but it did. We have everything packed. The stuff for the car fits in the car (with emergency room to spare), the last batch of donations has been dropped off at Boomerangs, and the trash bins are overflowing.

(I’ve had us in an unofficial contest with the neighbors who are also moving – every time one of us puts furniture out on the sidewalk, our stuff goes much more quickly. (Heck, there’s even one item we didn’t put out on the sidewalk, but put with the trash bins because it wasn’t worth bleaching out all the mouse droppings hiding in back. It *still* went in under an hour.) It’s the small imaginary victories that keep me going when there’s too much to do. Our stuff is more popular! w00t.)

It’s been a tougher process than in the past. We’ve been in the same place for 9 years, it’s two of us and not just one, we’re not moving across town (where we can just toss a few boxes in the car at a time), and we’ve have solid incomes for the past several years and have started to accrue substantial items (like a queen-sized bed).

So there was a lot more to go through. Boxes that haven’t been looked at in 9 years (*lots* of shredding there!); stuff from my gramma that I couldn’t bear to part with at the time; old nostalgia items that no longer have memories attached; tchotchkes that need to be donated to make my allergist happy… We can’t just toss things in a box and say “we’ll deal with this later” like we have in the past. We’re paying someone to move this for us. We’re about to lose 60% of our income (best case scenario). I steeled myself to be merciless about throwing things away and putting books in storage.

(I’m afraid to go into Boomerangs. Too afraid it’ll look like our apartment.)

Too often I had to look at something, say “I like this, but…” and donate it. I worry that in six months I’ll regret having been so thorough. But we still have so much stuff left, how can I complain!

We gave up on the final boxes late last night. Y’know, the we-no-longer-have-the-right-sized-boxes-for-these-final-things stage. When you wind up throwing the hair dryer in the same box with the light box and tees and hair elastics. Too tired to make pieces fit anymore.

(I got home from my board meeting and Arthur and his mom were drying out the mattress from an AC-relocation mishap. Of course things couldn’t go smoothly… At least this was something fixable.)

Alas, insomnia made me its bitch again – too much going on, swirling around – and I wound up with only a couple of hours of sleep before we headed back at 6 a.m. to finish up before the trucks arrived. Oof. (We’d spent the night elsewhere so that the mattresses could be wrapped – these “baggies” are quite a bit larger than our sandwiches use ;)

But! At 8:42 a.m., Arthur started packing the last lamp. Since the movers were expected between 9 and 10, this worked well. We could organize the boxes, doublecheck that everything was labeled, and clean whatever we needed to.

However… This is when the skies decided to open in an absolute downpour. No! We just got the mattress dry! Thankfully it calmed down by 9:30, which is when the truck arrived.

Gotta’ say, these guys were wonderfully efficient. We felt guilty sitting around reading while they moved everything. We’re so used to moving ourselves! But everything went smoothly, and soon the truck was pulling away and we were left with an empty house.

(In fact, one of the movers even complimented our packing job. Go us! By which I mostly mean Go Arthur!)

It still didn’t feel real. Even with the apartment [mostly – a couple items remained because they belonged with the apartment] empty, it still felt like ours. It didn’t collapse into a bland space. The walls were still the colors we’d painted them; the kitchen still has the custom-built spice rack in the corner; the shelves we put up above the stove are there. Touches of us remained everywhere.



It’s been 9 years. We really loved this place. It was the right space for us. We had landlords who let us paint and decorate and do whatever we wanted (within reason). So we could make it our own. So many landlords insist on no wall hangings, plain white paint… no personality. And alas, traces of our personality still linger and make it harder to say goodbye.

But after touching up the paint and cleaning (there were some eeenteresting dust bunnies hiding behind the bookcases…), we finally washed ourselves up and left.