After nearly 2 years in Raleigh, Les and I moved back to Illinois last week. It was a bittersweet departure. We made so many incredible friends, and we fell in love with Raleigh in just 18 months. We will miss the Southland and all of our friends (especially in the winter), but we're excited for Les to start his new job as a full time professor.
We were sad to leave, but do you know what really sucks about moving? MOVING.
MOVING SUCKS.
Packing up all of our earthly belongings really made me stressed out about the number of our possessions and the lengths we are willing to go to move them from place to place.
Not only did we pay to acquire them in the first place, but we then have to pay to transport them from home to home. And let me tell you, moving ain't cheap! We very seriously discussed the idea of chucking almost everything (via donation), saving the couple of thousand dollars in moving expenses, and starting over with a clean slate and a commitment to only allow truly useful and beautiful things into our new home.
But we didn't do that. It seemed wasteful/impractical and ultimately pretty expensive. Won't we need socks and bottle openers and bowls in our new home? Didn't people we love just buy us most of the contents of this kitchen for our wedding? Didn't we carefully select this stuff when we bought it? (Most of it, anyway?)
So we didn't go with the Chuck it and Start Fresh plan, but I was still determined to pare down my stuff. I signed up for the Becoming Minimalist blog and started pinning tips on de-cluttering and purging. And to really seal the deal, I convinced Les that we would only take as much as could fit into 2 U-Boxes and our car trunks. That's actually not a lot of space for a 2 bedroom apartment that is insulated primarily by hardcover philosophy tomes.
We did manage to donate or discard a lot of things. I completed a massive Dresser Drawer Purge that was incredibly gratifying. Look at how easily these drawers close now! Look how neatly the remaining t-shirts are stacked!
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| Stuff I Did Not Move |
So I got rid of an embarrassing mound of stretched out coffee-stained t-shirts. A good start, but more like a ding than a substantial dent in the Crap.
As the packing extravaganza finally wore down, we started cramming things randomly into boxes. Les and I started saying things like "If it makes it to Illinois in one piece, then great, and if not, then who cares...". If we don't care whether that particular photo frame or pie plate survives, then why oh why do we own it? And why are we moving it? We're strange, stuff-owning creatures, though. I do hope that those things all survive their long journey back to us. But ultimately they are just things, and I will (try) not (to) cry over their untimely demise if the time comes.
Now that we're here and our U-boxes are on the way, I do wish we had purged some more. I'm thinking I will keep thinning and thinning my clothing stash as we set up home in a new place with limited storage. My plan is to immediately dismiss anything we do not actually need or use or love in our new home. Give each item some sort of probation status for each season and then coldly kick it to the curb if it is not pulling its Beauty or Usefulness weight. If we had had time to do that before we packed two moving crates Tetris-style, that would have been even better. Now, we get to deal with the unpacking and post-move purging on the Illinois side.
But I do love a challenge! New home, new space, new opportunities for conscientious consumption and thoughtful simplificiation.
Oh, and since I am currently unemployed, more blogging. And hopefully a photography class to improve everyone's blog-reading experience.
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