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1.08.2012

(Feels Like) Spring Cleaning...

I haven't really written about it since the middle of last month, but we've still be chipping away at our move, which we've tentatively scheduled for the 28th of this month.The holidays kind of screwed up our momentum, but Justin and my mom have been over at our new place as much as possible during the week to work on the home improvement projects going on there. We spent nearly all of New Year's weekend packing, and I've been focusing on continuing that process, in addition to organizing and purging my belongings in the hope that we'll be able to fit two people's stuff into one condo. Keeping in that theme, I spent my weekend in the burbs going through stuff, packing, and organizing the belongings I have there.

Saturday, I started off the day with Mom, packing up her car to take a load of boxes up to her house. Given the complexity of our move (there is stuff coming from my parents' condo where I live now, furniture coming from my bedroom at my parents' house, stuff from the storage locker where I put all my belongings after college, and stuff from Justin's house), we decided to consolidate as much as possible and stage the move from my parents' house, so we wouldn't have to pay more for the movers to go to all those different places. As a result, we're really engaging in several different mini-moves, but I think it's worth all of the logistical planning in order to get the movers to carry as much as possible up to our third-floor walk-up.

After we deposited another batch of boxes in the garage, I started about the task of cleaning out my dresser to ready it for the move. I tossed a huge volume of papers, cards, movie ticket stubs, and miscellaneous bric-a-brac from my high school days. It was kind of fun to see it all one last time, but at the same time, high school feels like a million years away now, and my emotional attachment to that phase of my life is virtually non-existent. Those were not memories I felt I needed to take with me into the new life I'm about to start.

In the evening, I went over to Justin's parents' house to help him start the arduous task of cleaning out his childhood bedroom and packing up his stuff to move. To say that Justin is a pack rat is somewhat of an understatement, and I'm not sure he'll have his room cleaned out in time for us to move, but I think it was good that I was there to provide some encouragement and moral support for his purging process. It's a process that will be hard, but necessary for him, and I'll continue to provide support (and a bit of nagging) until he's finished.

Today, Justin, Mom and I went over to the storage unit where I stored my stuff from college and went through the boxes there. It was nostalgic to see the furnishings from the house I rented with my friends on Pershing, near campus, but very little of them go with our current color palette, and I marked them to be donated to charity. I also culled two entire boxes of my once enormous board game collection, which was appropriate when I routinely entertained groups of 6-10 people, but aren't so necessary now that my home is going to consist of two individuals. 

I kept some classics, like Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit, and perhaps the most emotionally resonant of all my college-era belongings -- my Milles Bournes set, but disposed of almost everything else. Even if it won't be the same as it was in college with all my pals, I can't wait to teach Justin how to play Milles Bournes, and maybe even the accompanying song that we made up for it.

My goal was to completely empty the storage unit, so my parents can stop paying for it on my behalf, but with the garage so full of moving boxes, there simply wasn't room to bring it with us. It'll have to remain there until we get all of our stuff moved to our new place later this month.

Thankfully, the weather has been cooperating with our moving plans. It's been incredibly unseasonably warm around here, with virtually no snow to speak of so far. I probably could be getting away with just wearing a jacket if I really wanted. I know it's all going to come to an abrupt end shortly, but in the meantime, I'm going to try to cram in as much preparation for the move as possible...

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