We’ll pack up all our junk and fly so far away
Devote ourselves to projects that sell
The process of packing is always horrendous. You’d think I
would find a way to get out of the annual habit, but here I am, another year,
another move (another suitcase in another hall?). This will be my first move with a moving van – wish me luck…
Packing makes me hate having things. For this brief period,
I wish I could live an ascetic life. Late-night, chaotic packing makes me say
desperate and near-blasphemous things to the empty air, such as “Would it be so
bad if I just never baked anything again? I wouldn’t even need this box of cookie
sheets and muffin tins, in that case.” Don’t worry, a small voice of reason
still exists in my head.
Speaking of talking to myself, I knew that I reached a point
of desperation in my packing when my self-talk started using outdated
nicknames. Pull it together, Katie Lou.
Do the Next Thing. Stop dawdling. By the end of that day, my personal preference
for Katrina had at least negotiated a compromise, and my interjections were addressed
to K (my solution to navigating the
process of switching to my full name during college. For the record, Katie is in limited use, only for those
who’ve been pre-approved).
Of course, packing and moving things to storage didn’t have
to be so terrible. I could have sought help. I had many offers of help. But it
was tough to know how to let others help me. I personally had to handle everything
as it went into boxes, because I was sorting what should go to NYC, what should
go to Goodwill, and whether anything should go back to Oregon on my road trip
to be stored in my parents’ garage. I did take an impressive load to Goodwill for donation, but we won't talk about how much of it was originally Goodwill purchases.
Organizing as I packed made the process take even longer, and then I dawdled further by cleaning the house in spurts as I went. Had I focused on the packing, I might have had enough done to take loads to storage at a reasonable time of day. As it was, I did unload one carful with the help of friends, whom I recruited in a sneaky way by having them over for a game night/goodbye party and casually mentioning that my car was full of boxes… The next big load, however, happened at midnight, so I was on my own for that, hoping all the while that I wasn’t waking up the friends who lived above.
Organizing as I packed made the process take even longer, and then I dawdled further by cleaning the house in spurts as I went. Had I focused on the packing, I might have had enough done to take loads to storage at a reasonable time of day. As it was, I did unload one carful with the help of friends, whom I recruited in a sneaky way by having them over for a game night/goodbye party and casually mentioning that my car was full of boxes… The next big load, however, happened at midnight, so I was on my own for that, hoping all the while that I wasn’t waking up the friends who lived above.
The last day of packing was supposed to be Saturday. In an ideal world, Sunday afternoon would have been devoted to cleaning and touching up paint. When I got back from church and jumped back into the
fray, I soon realized that the remainder would take me too long on my own. I
had small but awkward furniture to deal with and those boxes of final items that just
don’t fit well together. I had also run out of packing tape, so everything was
a jumble. My goal became simply to get things over to storage, where I could
sort it out on Monday before hitting the road. But I could see that I would not
have time to load and unload what would be two trips and also finish my
cleaning. So I broke down and made my panicked phone calls.
Laura Schmidt, bless her forever, heeded my call. She
deserves a special recognition for giving me exactly what I
needed to get through that last day on Brittany Court. After recognizing the desperation
in my voice, she dropped everything and came to my rescue. I met her at the
door in full ISTJ catastrophe mode, promptly bursting into tears. Her response
was perfect – she gave me a hug, stepped back, and asked if I was hydrated. I
whimpered out “um, well, I *sniff* don’t know.” “When did you last drink
water?” she clarified. Since the answer was “at church this morning,” she made
me stop and take a drink and then got down to business. That’s the way to do
it. Offer comfort and then get practical. This pulled me out of what was
threatening to become the depths of despair. I called my landlord to set up a
later time for the walk through, and then Laura and I both drove our cars over to storage. After unloading, she came back with me, helped load up a few last
things, and whisked away the empty, unwanted boxes.
I finished the cleaning under the watchful eyes of my
landlady, who came over early to give the new tenant a second look at the
kitchen, which was still being cleaned by yours truly. However, the diligence
paid off, and the full security deposit was refunded. Bidding farewell to the
house, I managed to catch the last few minutes of Amy Heck’s goodbye party
before calling it a night.
Those final, jumbled bits somehow made more sense on Monday
morning, and I was able to leave my boxes in an organized pile. The packing
saga will continue on Saturday as those boxes and my odd collection of
furniture go into a moving van and across six states to my new home.
