I. HATE. PACKING. Any kind of packing. Packing lunch. Packing for a weekend. Packing for a week’s vacation. Packing a snack for Liam. I just hate packing. In my head there are just to many “what if’s”.
What if Liam wants goldfish instead of pretzels? Just bring both.
What if it’s cold in the morning and warm in the afternoon? Bring a few coats (after all you don’t know which one will match).
What if it rains? Then I’m going to need the tennis shoes and not the sandals. Bring both.
What if it’s hot and I wear my hair up? I’ll need this shirt. But if I want to wear my hair down? I’ll want this shirt.
Will I wear my hair straight or curly? Just bring the straightener AND the curling iron.
It’s ridiculous really. And then my bag ends up weighing 50 pounds–or more as it did back in December. I had to strategically pull out clothes and put them in the bag I purposefully packed for just that instance. That’s right. I just knew I would be over the 50 pound limit so I packed another bag in that bag for the potential overflow!
So as the daunting task of packing up our house has loomed before me I just put it off. Matt helped a little before he left with the stuff that went with him to Montana. And I had a big packing session back when I thought we’d sold the house the first time. I’d left just the ‘necessities’…or so I thought. In my head there “wasn’t much to do”.
My wonderful Momma proved me wrong though. She was up here this week watching Liam and helped me get a giant start on this “not much to do” packing chore. And she spent one whole day while I was at work doing just that.
When it comes to packing, not only am I unable to make decisions but I have ADD. I’ll be packing up the kitchen and see the dish detergent which reminds me of laundry detergent which reminds me that I had clothes in the wash so I run to the laundry to tend to them. Then I see a shirt I had forgotten about so I run to the bedroom to add that to the pile of clothes to be packed. While putting the clothes in my room I start thinking about what to make for dinner. I grab my phone to add that item to the grocery list but then I see that I have three text messages… It’s the woman’s version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
Before Mom got here I had so many partially packed boxes or piles of things that needed boxes. Trying to decide what goes to Montana NOW, what can go into storage here for about a year and what we just don’t need anymore made packing to much for me. But, unlike me, she can focus on one task at a time…and wasn’t afraid to get rid of anything! Not even this bottle of eye drops from 2007!!! And I thought some of the condiments from 2014 were bad…
It is definitely going to be nice having a “fresh start” with less stuff. Getting rid of stuff can be hard. I’m not a hoarder by any means but there’s just something about throwing away things that’s so final. I try to live by the mentality that if something doesn’t have a place in the house then you don’t need it. Back around Christmas when I was speed cleaning for a showing I was stuffing ‘things that didn’t have a home’ into any place I could find. And I didn’t find these until just yesterday!
But thanks to my mom’s help I’ve got a giant pile of stuff that won’t be stored or saved. It will find a nice home at the Salvation Army – or in the house of my friends who decided to ‘shop’ through the pile!
Next Saturday is the true packing day. All the furniture will be taken to the storage unit here in Marion and a final cleaning of the house will be done. Liam and I will stay at my in-laws house until I sign the papers on Tuesday and then it’s off to Raleigh…one step closer to Montana!