Job? Check! Rental house? Check! Packed house? Not quite!
Next up was making the actual move. Due to the date I set for my resignation, I would be working up until the week before the move. That meant almost all the packing was going to have to be done in the evenings and on the weekend. At least I work in a place where there are A LOT of boxes to be had. I asked our wonderful cafeteria and maintenance staff to please save boxes for me. Since I’m a teacher, it meant I not only had to pack our house for the move, but I also had to pack all of my classroom resources, which, as a science teacher, was a significant amount of “stuff”. Oh, and in the meantime, I still had to finish out one school year and plan for the first few weeks of a new year. Even with great resources, that’s still a necessary time commitment.
One thing I quickly realized as I began to pack was that we had accumulated A LOT of “stuff” in the six years we’d been in our house. Not to mention, I found a couple boxes that hadn’t been unpacked since we had moved in! Holy cow! I knew that multiple trips to the thrift store and county dump were going to be in our future. The hard part would be deciding what would stay and what would go. The thing about most “stuff” in our lives is that it got there because we wanted it. There is some kind of significant meaning behind most of it and letting go can be a difficult thing. Take, for instance, a collection of state quarters. When the quarters were first introduced we bought a nifty display card that had a slot for each of the fifty quarters. We checked our quarters diligently for several years to make sure we had one of each state and then carefully pressed it into the slot for the world to see. But, the thing is, many of the quarters had been circulated already so they weren’t all shiny and ultimately weren’t worth more than their face value and a bit of sentimental value. So now we are $12.50 richer and honestly don’t miss that collection. Granted that example may not seem like something hugely sentimental, and to be honest, it’s not, but the point is that there are a great many things in our lives that are just like it and sometimes we just have to learn to let go.
So bit by bit the “things” that defined our lives were slowly disappearing into boxes designed frozen pizzas or fresh fruit and those boxes piled up in the garage. I tried to pack a few boxes each evening and even more on the weekend. Each day the pile in the garage grew until we couldn’t park in the garage any longer. As the day for the move got closer and closer, the packing got more and more frantic. I had been careful about how I packed (that’s the old Army brat in me) – keeping like items together in a box, accurately labeling boxes, fitting as much as possible in a box before closing – but as time got shorter, I really had to fight with that OCD part of myself. I knew I’d probably regret it once we got to the new place, but I just didn’t have the time any more to be picky. Kitchen items were packed with computer room odds and ends. Some of my craft items ended up in boxes with linens and Christmas decorations were mixed with Halloween (is that even legal??). I still tried to label things so hopefully I wouldn’t be too confused when the time came to unpack.
In the end, everything came together and we were about 90% prepared on the actual day of the move. We hired movers to help us load the U-Haul truck and after several back breaking hours we had most of our belongings tightly packed into the truck. We were ready to hit the road. There were a few things left in the house and we still had to do a deep clean so we made plans to go back to the house a week or so later to finish up. We rose early the next morning, walked the dogs, had breakfast and a cup of coffee, then loaded the dogs and a few random odds and ends. We were on our way to a new country life before the sun was even up. Leaving our home of six years was bittersweet, but we knew we had an exciting adventure waiting for us on the other side of the state. The next step… unpacking.
