Our stuff arrived; our boxes are unpacked. Except for some boxes of files that we keep dragging around, most of our stuff is put away, if you don’t count the piles of books waiting for shelves. It’s been 3 months since we left Mississippi. It will probably be about another month before our routine runs smoothly. Add in a couple of months prior to the move that were spent organizing and researching for the move, and you come up with about six months spent relocating. About average. After 9 or 11 moves, depending on if you count temporary duty orders, I thought I should make some notes on things that I should have learned by now.
1. First of all if you think the packers are not being cautious with your stuff, you should probably speak up. They may stuff your linens into your bookshelves, or toss your sewing machine in a box with knickknacks from your dresser, or put your crockpot on top of your game boxes, so that both your game boxes and your crockpot are broken.
2. If you have forgotten that you own something, you probably don’t need it. Stuff is work. It seems like I had a lot more free time before all of our stuff arrived. Our first two weeks here without our boxes, I had time to hang out at the park and fiddle in the garden. Now I’m constantly shifting piles of stuff, mostly little things that don’t have a place or a purpose. Sometimes I just want to throw everything away and start over. But almost everything has an emotional association. When you move around a lot, your stuff is what makes you feel at home when nothing about the climate or the neighborhood is familiar. It makes me happy to see pictures on our walls that used to be at my grandparents’ house.
3. While unpacking, just keep chanting, like goes with like, like goes with like. When you gather all your pencils in one spot and see that you have enough to fill a shoebox, you probably can afford to throw some out. When you seen that you have about 50 photo albums, you realize you probably need to develop fewer photos. Or start making photo books online because they take up less space. But then what if you need print for a project or…. I’m struggling with photo storage solutions.
4. You can go almost 3 weeks without cleaning a new house before you start to notice rings around the faucets, handprints on the light fixtures, sticky spots on the tile, soap scum in the shower. I thought new houses might be self cleaning or at least dirt resistant by now. Why hasn’t anyone come up with a solution to keep grout dirt free? One exception to that 3 week estimation: the boys’ bathroom needs a scrub after about 2 days before the stink gets too strong.
5. I got a little excited about getting organized and spent about $100 on bins and baskets when we first moved in. They sat in my closet waiting to be filled with stuff. Then our stuff arrived, and I realized I had plenty of baskets and bins. Those matching organizers look so professional and clean in the decorating magazines, but how often does anyone look in my closets? The people who see my closets are people with children who have similarly arranged closets: plastic bins, cardboard boxes, toy boxes full of odds and ends. So I took back all of those organizers with an apology to the clerk for making extra work.
6. There’s something to be said for having a system for organizing that makes it easy to unpack and put stuff away. But sometimes you have to press restart, and relocate some items. The bottom of our corner cabinet has held dishes and videos; now it holds art supplies. A shelf that had been in our office for a couple years with oversized books is working better in the boys’ room with school books and supplies. A wrought iron shelf that once held cookbooks, and then plants, works pretty well as a muddy shoe organizer on the porch. Shoes are pretty much permanently covered with red clay mud here. Just as in the Chicagoland area, snow rarely stopped anyone from doing what they wanted to do, here rain and mud aren’t deterrents to playing outside.
7. Although the physical work has gone relatively smoothly with this move (note to self: the movers seemed more motivated when offered a batch of chocolate cookies and plenty of Gatorade), the emotional upheaval of moving has been a little more disruptive. One minute I’m enjoying the tropics, happy about the variety of vegetation and the possibility of snorkeling and diving, looking forward to the next adventure, and the next minute, I’m frustrated by the rain, the time change for making calls, the time wasted redoing things, the difficulty of having to find new piano teachers, figure out extracurriculars, look for the best place to find bargains. Those are just superficial things to complain about when you can’t figure out how to express the unrest caused by dislocation and disconnection. But then I think back to those first weeks in our last locale, and remember the happiness we eventually found there. So I could complain about the wasted time, or I could let it be part of the experience. We’re here together, we’re healthy, the kids are adjusting well. The stuff makes us feel like we’re staying and that this is home base for now. We have much to be thankful for.
You know where to go for more: www.conversiondiary.com
1. First of all if you think the packers are not being cautious with your stuff, you should probably speak up. They may stuff your linens into your bookshelves, or toss your sewing machine in a box with knickknacks from your dresser, or put your crockpot on top of your game boxes, so that both your game boxes and your crockpot are broken.
2. If you have forgotten that you own something, you probably don’t need it. Stuff is work. It seems like I had a lot more free time before all of our stuff arrived. Our first two weeks here without our boxes, I had time to hang out at the park and fiddle in the garden. Now I’m constantly shifting piles of stuff, mostly little things that don’t have a place or a purpose. Sometimes I just want to throw everything away and start over. But almost everything has an emotional association. When you move around a lot, your stuff is what makes you feel at home when nothing about the climate or the neighborhood is familiar. It makes me happy to see pictures on our walls that used to be at my grandparents’ house.
3. While unpacking, just keep chanting, like goes with like, like goes with like. When you gather all your pencils in one spot and see that you have enough to fill a shoebox, you probably can afford to throw some out. When you seen that you have about 50 photo albums, you realize you probably need to develop fewer photos. Or start making photo books online because they take up less space. But then what if you need print for a project or…. I’m struggling with photo storage solutions.
4. You can go almost 3 weeks without cleaning a new house before you start to notice rings around the faucets, handprints on the light fixtures, sticky spots on the tile, soap scum in the shower. I thought new houses might be self cleaning or at least dirt resistant by now. Why hasn’t anyone come up with a solution to keep grout dirt free? One exception to that 3 week estimation: the boys’ bathroom needs a scrub after about 2 days before the stink gets too strong.
5. I got a little excited about getting organized and spent about $100 on bins and baskets when we first moved in. They sat in my closet waiting to be filled with stuff. Then our stuff arrived, and I realized I had plenty of baskets and bins. Those matching organizers look so professional and clean in the decorating magazines, but how often does anyone look in my closets? The people who see my closets are people with children who have similarly arranged closets: plastic bins, cardboard boxes, toy boxes full of odds and ends. So I took back all of those organizers with an apology to the clerk for making extra work.
6. There’s something to be said for having a system for organizing that makes it easy to unpack and put stuff away. But sometimes you have to press restart, and relocate some items. The bottom of our corner cabinet has held dishes and videos; now it holds art supplies. A shelf that had been in our office for a couple years with oversized books is working better in the boys’ room with school books and supplies. A wrought iron shelf that once held cookbooks, and then plants, works pretty well as a muddy shoe organizer on the porch. Shoes are pretty much permanently covered with red clay mud here. Just as in the Chicagoland area, snow rarely stopped anyone from doing what they wanted to do, here rain and mud aren’t deterrents to playing outside.
7. Although the physical work has gone relatively smoothly with this move (note to self: the movers seemed more motivated when offered a batch of chocolate cookies and plenty of Gatorade), the emotional upheaval of moving has been a little more disruptive. One minute I’m enjoying the tropics, happy about the variety of vegetation and the possibility of snorkeling and diving, looking forward to the next adventure, and the next minute, I’m frustrated by the rain, the time change for making calls, the time wasted redoing things, the difficulty of having to find new piano teachers, figure out extracurriculars, look for the best place to find bargains. Those are just superficial things to complain about when you can’t figure out how to express the unrest caused by dislocation and disconnection. But then I think back to those first weeks in our last locale, and remember the happiness we eventually found there. So I could complain about the wasted time, or I could let it be part of the experience. We’re here together, we’re healthy, the kids are adjusting well. The stuff makes us feel like we’re staying and that this is home base for now. We have much to be thankful for.
You know where to go for more: www.conversiondiary.com
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