Packing it all up

      Everything we own is going into boxes. Everything. Picture that for a moment. Every sock, every lamp, every towel, every jar of food, every toy, every lawn tool. All of it. It's going into boxes. Big boxes. Tiny boxes. Appliance boxes. That's what you do when you move. You pack your belongings and move them to a new house. It's not that big of a deal. But for us, this time it's different. We're not moving. Sure, we're packing our stuff up. We're wrapping the valuables. We're labeling the boxes. But we're not moving them. Not into a new house, anyways. Just out of this one. Everything we own is going into boxes. Everything.

     We can't really say what our plan is with total certainty. We know we're not buying a house right away. We are certain about that. We also know that we're not even going to rent a place to live right away. That is also certain. The other thing that we are certain about, is that we have to get out of our old house, and get out soon. Without a place to move to, we had to at least find a place for our stuff.

Everything.

A storage locker made the most sense at this point. We found one online, and selected the biggest one we could get. It's 35' by 10'. That's how much room we calculated it would take to hold everything we own. Everything. In a 35 by 10 foot room. Once we put the money down, in our heads, there was no turning back. We were all in. This was happening. We put up shelves, and slowly started filling them up. Trip after trip. Truck load after van load. Our stuff, piled away and neatly stacked, contained in a large metal room. Everything we own is going into boxes, and living in a storage locker.

     It's tough to pack up your life when it's been in one place for so long. We spent ten years of our lives at this house. We started our family here. When we bought this house we were a family of three. Now we total six. We spent a lot of time in this house, and it shows. Having babies (some IN the actual house), raising them to toddlers, and then into young children is a huge endeavor. Add homeschooling to the equation, and that equals a LOT of living in one house. We lived hard in this house. We we're not just casual passer-byes. No. We were entrenched in this house. And apparently, living like this means you end up with a lot of stuff.  Don't get me wrong. We're not hoarders. We're not buried in piles of stuff. I would even say, that we are far less materialistic than the "typical" American family. In fact, we made a concerted effort over the years to constantly purge our house of stuff. We were diligent. We donated bags upon bags to charity every couple of months. We truly admired the minimalist lifestyle, and talked about how great that would be, to live free of your stuff. Yet somehow, without us even trying, the stuff grew. It grew into piles of unfinished projects. Into stacks of half completed artwork. Over here, were the things we'd built ourselves. Over there, the stack of gifts we received. The books we read. The recipes we gathered. The furniture we assembled. The... well... the stuff. That's what it really boils down to. It's all just stuff. So much stuff. And now it all has to go into boxes, and live in a storage locker. All of it. For who knows how long.

I don't think I'll miss any of it.