We "moved" today! Except, we're still living in our condo, and a lot of our stuff is still here.
We're still here because our tenants have pushed their move-in date back a bit. The original plan was for them to move in on August 15, and for us to move in with Liz's mom, Dorothy, in Newton for a month or so before we leave. As of yesterday though, the tenants won't be moving in until after Labor Day. Our commutes are much easier from Somerville than they would be from Newton, so we've decided to stay in our condo, but without much else here, for another 3 weeks. A nice, gradual transition to living out of a suitcase or backpack for 7 months...
Most of our stuff is still here because we're renting our condo fully furnished. And I do mean fully. I believe the exact quote from our tenants was "the fewer things we need to bring with us, the better." So, all the furniture, all the kitchen supplies, linens, TV, etc. are still here, and are staying here. We only had to move our clothes, books, and other personal stuff. We did, however, use this as an excuse to go through pretty much everything in the house, and purge all of that random junk that tends to build up over time.
We've both lived in this condo for 7+ years. It's not a huge place, and doesn't have a ton of storage, so we're forced to keep the amount of stuff we own under control on an ongoing basis. We also don't think of ourselves as people that buy and keep a lot of "stuff"... but apparently that's a false impression, because it turns out we had managed to cram every nook, cranny, cabinet, closet, and drawer in our condo with... stuff.
We sold a few things, sent bags of clothes to Goodwill, posted a long list to freecycle, and forced our friends to help us drink most of our bar. Unfortunately, we also ended up throwing out quite a few items that we couldn't find anyone to take. Just about everything we threw out was worthless, or close to it - knick knacks, plastic pieces of junk, old computer parts - but their lack of worth didn't make the amount of garbage we generated any less disheartening. It's easy to ignore the sheer volume of semi-disposable products we use on a day-to-day basis, but sifting through a houseful at a time really highlights just how much garbage we generate.
Even so, the great condo purge of 2013 was really satisfying. We got rid of a lot of unnecessary stuff - a lot of it to someone who will use it. It also made actually moving much easier. We rented a U-Haul cargo van, and didn't even fill it up. We moved all of our boxes and clothes in a few hours this morning. Soon we're going to spend 5+ months with only as much as we can carry on our backs. Hopefully living such a minimalist lifestyle will help keep us from accumulating more junk when we get back. And, finally being moved (or, mostly moved) is a big weight off, and a gigantic item to cross off of our todo list. One step closer to the trail!
No comments:
Post a Comment