I started purging and packing my apartment up in September 2021, even before I went to any open house or was pre-approved for a mortgage. Truthfully, I should have started the purging/decluttering the first day in 2020 when we all became pandemic shut-ins, because that would have been a productive use of my time.

It’s a pain to declutter and downsize your possessions, but when I’ve done it, I always feel such relief after—it’s freeing because I‘m reminded that I don’t need as many possessions after all.  At this point in my life, I’d usually pick an experience over an item.  But I was packing to move, and needed to go through everything. 

I was ok with going through most items I had packed away during my divorce, but there were still a few boxes of old photos and other letters from college and my twenties that I just couldn’t delve into. My head and heart seemed to be fully healed, but I wasn’t ready to sort through those parts of my past.  I could only label and tape those boxes up for the movers to carry to the new house (where I would keep them for future sorting out).

My mom helped me pack up a lot of things—dishes, anything breakable, and kitchen stuff—during the weekday evenings leading up to the move. My dad would drop her off for the evening, and then pick her up sometime around midnight. It was a blur, but there was a lot of insane laughter as we packed box after box of well-wrapped fragile dishes.  One of my friends, Allison, also helped me a few nights with packing, and I knew I would return the favor with her, as she was planning to move to Los Angeles the next year.  She and my mom channeled Marie Kondo, and kept me focused as I was starting to lose it with deciding what to keep and what to get rid of.

Besides packing, I booked movers because I wasn’t going to be carrying heavy furniture up and down lots of stairs.  I’m accident-prone (it’s a wonder I have all my toes) so it was a wise decision.  However, my mom had done an Internet investigation into the moving company I had booked and found that they had some lawsuits against them for bad deliveries. Because she’s retired, I asked her if she knew of a different moving company to use (which means I suggested-assigned her to find a reputable moving company since I already had a To-Do list as long as an epic poem), and I booked my move with them.

The more I packed up, it felt like I was living in a video game: Cardboard World. The amount of obstacles I had to navigate around in my apartment was ridiculous, as there were stacks of filled boxes, half-filled boxes, bubble wrap rolls, tape rolls, scissors, random bits of tape and other debris, and lint, dust, and paperclips scattered on the floor like confetti. I couldn’t run my Roomba vacuum because the debris would have killed him.

Moving day was December 10, and it felt like winter was around the corner that morning. I had been awake and picked up a large coffee, after about three hours of fitful sleep. The movers arrived in a huge truck and first brought in a few large wardrobe boxes for me to rehang my clothes in, while they started to load some furniture into the truck. After that, I faux-relaxed in the kitchen or outside, while they quickly moved all the boxes and furniture out of the apartment.

I sat outside, bundled up in my winter coat, and felt like a zombie.  The only math I was capable of was doing a mental countdown: how long until I could get to sleep? At that point, it was 11 a.m., and they would probably be done by mid-afternoon, so maybe by dinnertime I could pass out.  Around 1 p.m., the moving truck was full and we all drove the 4 miles from my apartment to the house. They drove the moving truck down the long, very narrow driveway without scraping the fence or the chimney (very impressive driving skills) and backed the truck up to the back door (so the back of the truck was mostly over the back steps). Unloading the truck was even faster, and my single job was a traffic conductor, directing the movers to place the furniture and boxes in the different rooms.

By 4 p.m., the movers were done, and I was finally alone. I didn’t even want to think about dinner, but my parents did—they brought me takeout from one of the local Italian restaurants, which I appreciated even as it was putting a crimp into my MUSTSLEEPNOW plan.  After my pasta dinner, they left, and I relaxed on the sofa, finally noticing the soundtrack around me—the furnace was a low rumble. Cars drove down the street, and next door, their inflatable holiday decorations played Christmas carols.

Somehow, it was holiday season and I felt very comforted as I could see out the front window, facing the word “Joy” lit up as part of my neighbor’s holiday decorations across the street.  I was home.

Next week, I’ll talk blinds and the Hello Kitty duct tape!