Packing

It's become real, by necessity, that we are moving in a little over 1 week. We started the packing process yesterday. Doug's mom came over in the afternoon to help me pack and boy did we get to it! Mary swept through the house gathering knick knacks and decorative items. They are easy to pack for storage, since they are not necessities. The house immediately looked barren and devoid of personality. Meanwhile, I dug into the kitchen and sorted things by which would go to storage, which to the apartment and which to give away. It's a healthy process to clean out every few years and I think the 6 years that we've been in this house was a little too long. We had so many kitchen-y things, many of which I no longer used. Plenty of them are from our wedding registry, but because I had so much of some things, some of it was bound to be unused. I also had an extra set of pots and pans. I only have 4 burners, so...

Now the kitchen has been swiped out and the clean-out process has left me wondering if I ever want to unpack my stuff or if we should just live the simple life. We'll get a taste of the simple life for the next 6 months as we eat from only 4 plastic plates and bowls, the usual kids dishes and disposables. I just hate the idea of packing up all of our dishes, unpacking and then packing again in 6 months, so I'm minimizing what goes to the apartment. We currently have a large stash of well-packed boxes in our front room, but only 2 are going to the apartment. There are still a few things in the kitchen cabinets that we'll use this week until we are absolutely forced to pack them to take to the apartment.

I've also packed the kids' toys. They each chose 2 toy-types to go with us and I chose a couple of standards, like Legos. The rest have been packed into boxes for storage. It will be like Christmas all over again when we arrive in the new house and open all of their long-lost toys.

The kids' rooms have been cleared of all wall-art and personality and it's really starting to feel like we're leaving. I look around and see the shell of our home, but it's stripped of it's substance. I'm beginning to wonder if the buyers could still like such an empty, hollow looking place. It also makes me wonder how long it will be before we feel at home in the new house. The regretful part is that with all the busyness of packing and moving and getting every tiny task accomplished, I'm sure I will feel more resentment toward this house and the stuff inside it than I will sadness about leaving. Perhaps it is just a distraction from the feeling we will have that first night when we just want to go home, but realize that someone else lives in our home now... and all of our keys are gone...and we'll never see inside the house again.

It's all very bittersweet, but mainly back breaking and exhausting at this point.