I just bought my second set of moving boxes the other day – you guessed it, we’re busy packing. Moving day is coming soon and we’re busy. Imagine the stuff a family of five accumulates – some of it junk, some still good, we just don’t want to move it. So far we’ve donated a car full of stuff to a friend having a garage sale for charity – clothes, accessories, books, humidifier, air conditioner – all kinds of stuff we don’t use or need. I heard she made $800 to donate to cancer research. We also donated the car that was holding all the stuff. I’m glad my stuff has gone on to do good, it sure wasn’t doing me any good.
A friend of mine who was purging her house after a divorce earned the nickname ‘Ruth’ for being ruthless and getting rid of everything. And I mean everything, including the ill-fated wedding photos! (I thought she should have kept them, after all you’ll never be 26 and that gorgeous again. She argued that she’d have another wedding and new photos to replace them. And she did.)
With three kids, we’re not getting rid of the baby photos any time soon. But we are sorting and packing an awful lot of stuff. Which, with three kids, presents its own challenges.
Six year old Mr. Sensitive is a thoughtful observer, and generous donator of stuff to other kids. He knows other children will enjoy playing with his old toys. When we ask his opinion, “Do you want your trucks in the box, or to play with now?” he gives a reasonable response.
Little Miss Adorable is the sorter/ hoarder. She is busy packing her own toys into individual sandwich bags and organising her baby dolls. She is also the secret unpacker. An unguarded suitcase is no match for Little Miss Adorable’s nimble fingers – zip, and all my hard work is repacked into little sandwich bags and stacked beside her baby dolls.
The Dunk brings an element of chaos to packing. And unpacking. With herculean strength, he pushes and shoves his way into anything not firmly taped down. And then does some packing and unpacking of his own. I found a handful of toy cars mixed in with my important documents. And Lego is everywhere. No matter how preoccupied he seems, the instant my back is turned he darts over to unpack whatever it is I’ve just finished.
So at this point in the packing process, we’ve adopted a Zen like philosophy. Stuff gets packed. And stuff gets unpacked. Sometimes by us – like when I had to dig through an enormous box of papers to find the one document an agency just had to have. Sometimes by the kids. Stuff we thought we’d sorted and boxed mysteriously ends up in the sofa cushions.
And stuff goes missing. Like all of The Dunk’s pacifiers. And Hubby’s phone. Oh well, we’ll find it when we unpack