All My Stuff

George Carlin talked about stuff, and how we leave our house to go out and get more stuff. We then figure out we have too much stuff that we need a bigger place for our stuff.

My family is doing this backwards.

Years ago we moved from a large two story, six bedroom house into a 3 bedroom single level apartment. This required a lot of our stuff to be placed into storage. Luckily my father-in-law had some extra room in one of his garages and he built a 10x10 area for storage for us. We still had to rent a storage unit near where we lived for things like holiday decorations, seasonal clothing storage, and those types of things.

We later moved from that apartment into a smaller 2 bedroom house that was back in the town we wanted to live in. There was a garage that came with that house so a lot of our things ended up going into the garage, including the things from the rented storage unit.

We're moving again. This time we're renting two rooms from my in-laws; one of them for our kids, the other for us. We have had to, yet again, condense things down to the bare essentials. Clothes, beds, computers. The rest is being packed up to be placed into storage.

But it isn't going into the 10x10 storage unit that is already here with some of our stuff in it. It's being placed in a rented building which was formerly a bank about 8 miles away.

I now have things spread across a 10 mile radius in 3 different locations. And these are just the major things.

I have inheritable items at my grandma's and parent's homes. Desks, tables, and other assorted items are located 200 miles away from me.

Did I mention we're looking at moving AGAIN in about 6 to 8 months so that I can attend graduate school. This is on the condition I am offered a position, of course, but still...the looming task of repacking the things which we just packed and unpacked to move here is daunting. I hate the thought of it.

Right now it is almost worth however much it would cost to hire a moving company to come in to pack up all my shit, load it onto the truck, drive it down state, and unload the truck and move things into the apartment.

But the worst thing about all of this is that I don't know where anything is at anymore. Actually, I take that back. I know where just about everything is at. I've cataloged it all in my mind. I might not be able to lead you to the exact location in the unit, but I know which unit it is stored in.

Old pictures? 10x10. Sewing material? Old bank. Easter baskets? Old house.

The need for compartmentalization is key, otherwise it would be a tiring chore keeping track of the most unimportant items for all 4 people in our family.

Now that you've served as my therapist and I've unloaded all of this onto you - tell me about your moving nightmares. Do you have things scattered all across the state? Country? Globe?

...did I mention that I also have stuff that my best friend couldn't take with him when he moved to Germany? 12 years ago.