I’ve never made a secret of this: I love moving. Even when I am happy in a city, I have a really hard time not thinking ahead to the next place I will live. I know it is not really a normal thing, to always be chasing the next place. And I’m not sure why I have such a hard time embracing the moment. It may be just that I’m super goal-oriented, and once I accomplish one thing it is natural for me to think of the next. I’d be lying to you if I said fantasies of my next move have not once crossed my mind since I’ve been in Los Angeles. They were FLEETING, but they exist. I can’t NOT think of moves across geographies and climes.
But, no doubt about it, I’m slowing down. Partially because everything I’ve been wanting is finally back in my life – water, cooler weather, bike lanes, a nice job. But also because, yeah, ok, once you are 38 and married, moving becomes a lot more of a pain in the ass.
Or maybe it was just because we had been home, in Dallas, and with living next to relatives comes an inevitable inheritance of crap – my mother would just bring me shoes or something because she is sweet and thinking of me; David’s parents would bring over a box of something from when he was 10 (which, because none of my childhood stuff exists anymore to my knowledge, I would always meet with a “They actually KEPT all of this? Did you.. .MISS IT?”). And of course, the wedding and the lovely gifts. All in all, I think I gained more STUFF in the five years in Dallas than I had had for a long time. Which made the move harder. Because one of the reasons I love love love moving regularly is that I am forced to face the things I own, and decide whether I love them, or if for any other reason they are worth moving. And that can be a long process.
This time, I was fairly ruthless, yet I still feel like I ran out of time and didn’t get rid of all the things I wanted to. I narrowed down my closet by at least half, I think, if not more. We got rid of crappy kitchen stuff that had just been banging around for a long time. We purged a good amount of books. We got rid of most pieces of furniture (we kept the bed, the kitchen table, some chairs). And tons of old art supplies I just hadn’t had time to put to good use. Over the past several years I have really knit more than I have painted, and I have always been more of a drawer anyway, so it made sense to get rid of the paints.
As always though, time got away from us. I have about 4 boxes in the back room right this minute labeled “miscellaneous”, that we ended up just tossing the last of the stuff in. Part of me really just wants to toss them out as is, I have to say. But I’m going to finish the job.
These two boxes were about 6x6x8. One had all our boxes (books, etc) and the other the furniture and bicycles.
But I’ve also gotten to the point where I do genuinely have some stuff I love. I’ve been able to spend a little money on some things and I really like them. I try so so hard not to get attached to material things, but it is also nice to be able to enjoy my home and have some constants in my relocation-mania. So, yeah, I did have to painstakingly wrap up about 20 frames artworks and prints, and that sort of sucked. But now that we are settled in, I’m so glad I did. It really does feel like home, and we’ve only been here 4 months.
So, in the end, I think we came with (almost) the right amount of things. Enough that we feel like we are at home but not so much that I feel a bit overwhelmed (like in Dallas). And I don’t feel like I have to purge again yet. So that next move can stay far in the future; no new boats yet need to be built. This ship should last me a while.
