Boxed In

Inspirational song: Urgent (Foreigner)

It's kind of like looking at one of those super-big Rubik's cubes, completely jumbled, and not knowing the cheat codes. Where do you start? Do you just turn sides blindly until slowly, a pattern emerges? Do you work out one color block, assuming the rest will fall into place without disturbing what you've already accomplished? It's overwhelming to me, this whole packing thing.

I tried to pack up my office/guest room this afternoon. I had put it together nicely last year, removing most of the piled up junk that had been dropped in there to be forgotten, painted it, and added a day bed so my younger daughter didn't have to sleep on a foam pad on the floor when she and her sister visited at the same time. Now, after our last set of out of town guests ever in this house have left, that room started getting piles of debris again. I packed four boxes from it, three of which had been half-filled and left in a stack in the middle of the room. All boxes were removed and brought downstairs, but that room still looks every bit as cluttered and full as before. I feel like I can't quite find the loose thread to unravel this knot. I need to leave enough in the room to stage it for real estate listing photographs, so I can't just throw everything into boxes and shut the door. Maybe I should just drag all the crap into the hall, take the pictures, and then take the room apart.

Every time we have moved, I have always started packing months in advance. No matter how much I do ahead of time, no matter how well I believe I planned, it always feels like I'm leaving a ton of work to be done at the end, under a sense of panic. This is how we end up with boxes labeled "mom's' office skrit - sort later." Naturally, most of those boxes are never sorted at the next house, until we are getting ready to move again. "Oh, I guess we already had a ton of those. Too bad we bought more already." Every time.

I don't know that this will be the last move ever. Considering how tight the housing market is where we are going, we are probably getting a transition house, not our forever home. But I'm still pretending that I'm going to open every box and sort it when we get there. We are going to be in a much smaller space. I'm feeling a sense of urgency to sort out the crap and donate as much of it as possible. Just not now. Please don't make me do it now.