A Moving Experience

If I were to write a list of things I hate to do, without a doubt, moving would be number one, and tied for first place would be the packing and sorting involved in order to move!

When we moved from the Cape back to the mountains, I spent hour after hour wrapping dishes, glasses, knick knacks, pictures and heaven knows what else. I knew a lot of things would have to be stored, so being the annoyingly organized person that I am, everything was placed into plastic bins, (they work so much better than cardboard boxes), and carefully marked so that things would end up in the right place. It all ran pretty smoothly, until I got to the clothes in my closet!

Clearly it was time to stop procrastinating and thin out years of accumulated fashions. Well, I have to be honest, my clothes kind of took up more room than just my closet; somehow a few things had found their way into my husband’s closet and spilled over to the upstairs hall closet, oh and the guest room closet; I won’t mention the stuff packed away under the bed!

Now I just want to say that I don’t buy a lot of clothes, and I’m not a pack rat, I just have a hard time parting with certain things. I have my thin clothes, my not so thin clothes, my it might come back in fashion clothes, even my what was I thinking when I bought this clothes.

My strategy was simple, I’d make three piles; Keep, Donate and Toss. However, every time I handled a piece of clothing I started to think about where and why I had gotten it; clearly I was going to have to pick up the pace, if I wanted to move with the rest of the house. I revamped my strategy, anything size 6 or under, went to the donate pile. I glanced in the mirror; did I really fit into those? Now, on top of this horrible chore, I was depressed! Anything over size 14, went to the donate pile. I glanced in the mirror; did I really fit into those? I was feeling a little better! Once I got in the groove, it didn’t take too long to zip through the rest of the closet and on to the next.

When I reached the back of the hall closet, I found an old suitcase that I had all but forgotten about. As I carried it out and set it on the bed, I was trying to recall what I had put in it. My thumbs snapped the latches open and I lifted the lid…on top was the little, white, fluffy bunting that I brought my son home in, when he was born, almost forty-one years ago, a red velvet muff, that my Mom had made for me when I was just a little girl, an apron that I had made in sewing class when I was 6 years old, a blazer patch from Egg Packing School Elmhurst Private School, a dog collar and tags belonging to Whiskey, the first puppy I ever had in the United States, the lace covered Bible I carried at my first wedding. The rest of the contents became a blur through the tears welling in my eyes; this suitcase was a microcosm of my life. I closed the lid, put my ‘treasures’ in a safe place and returned to the chore of sorting clothes.

Maybe it’s my ‘old age’ that makes me hate moving as much as I do! Maybe it’s because when my Dad was in the RAF, from the time I was born until we came to America, we moved over sixteen times. Maybe I’ve lost my spirit of adventure! Maybe it’s because, last night, my husband asked me if I thought this house was too big for just the two of us. Maybe I should have gotten on that damn bus with Edith!