We are moving this week. Not to Austin, not yet — just out of our apartment and into Meg’s parents’ house temporarily. I’m spending 3/4 of my time doing the grunt work, and 1/4 of the time playing Godfather: Blackhand Edition for the Wii. (Looking something like this.)
Because of the 1400 mile trip and the ridiculous cost of renting moving trucks one-way, we are getting rid of most of our stuff. Our bed, our desks, our dressers…everything. It’s literally cheaper to just hit up IKEA when you get down there.
We had a yard sale of a tiny fraction of our stuff in front of our apartment yesterday and made $60. Mostly, it was lamps, bookshelves, etc. I thought I was going to be distraught, selling our posession at such cheap prices, but actually, it was a relief.
Saying goodbye to the good stuff, though — the books, the records, the CDs — man, that’s rough. I’ve always liked to keep CDs and DVDs in their cases. No more of that. Bought three binders, filled them, and chucked the cases. We had six 50-pound book boxes, I narrowed it down to two. Three crates of LPs, cut them down to one.
I suppose it’s cheating a little to be storing them at a parent’s house. But still.
Moving is such a pain in the ass, but it can be a great time to take stock of things, if you put in a little effort. Clearing out the junk, throwing out those old drafts of stories you’ll never draw, books you’ll never read, pens that the ink’s run out of…it sets you up for a new stories, new books, new pens…new beginnings.
We got rid of a lot of stuff–fourteen pick-up truck loads–before we moved out here. And even cheaper than Ikea is Craig’s list, where you can pick up other people’s stuff that they bought at Ikea when they moved and that they are now replacing.
14 pickups!
I’ve been amazed at how much better Craigslist Austin seems to be than Craigslist Cleveland. (We actually found our apartment through Craigslist.)
When in doubt, throw it out. One time in a thousand you may regret it, but the other 999 episodes will more than make up for it.
That rule applies well to the refrigerator, too.
Boxes. Everything you’re done with goes into boxes and gets taped and sealed shut. No blacksliding. Boxes. I found a restaurant that let me have its cardboard. So many boxes I didn’t know what to do with them all. Cancerians love boxes. Well, the boxes got filled up. I use this interval between New Year’s and April Fool’s Day (!) to have a whole-house clutter-clearing session. Come April, some rummage sale gets the whole load. Out it goes. How liberating! You have moments when it can overwhelm. You go sit down. You relax and breathe. Make coffee. Get up and go at it again for a little while. Eventually you get clear decks and your life back again. Congratulations to any and all folks who are on the journey to get free and clear of clutter! – Chris.