Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The Great Purge of 2009

Three weeks from today, the moving fairies will descend upon the house we've lived in for the last four years. Although I have no personal experience with the moving fairies, I've heard other lucky people say that movers possess a certain kind of magic that enables them to swoop into a house, box it all up, and pack it into a truck-- all in the span of a single day! All of our previous moves have involved weeks of boxing, a couple of sweaty days inexpertly loading and unloading a truck, and much marital strife. The moving fairies (even if they arrive in the form of burly, sweaty, large men) sound pretty darn amazing.

So even though I could kick back and wait for the moving fairies to show up to do the heavy lifting, some primitive urge has struck. Call it mania, call it nesting without pregnancy, call it whatever you want, but I'm so dang excited to load up the stagecoach and head west (except, even better, we get to fly instead of caravaning across the country), I can't resist getting things ready.

So I'm purging. Yeah, we're moving into a new house that's 1600 square feet bigger than the one we're in right now, but I'm getting rid of things left and right. If you show up at my house unannounced, you might end up getting hit with a flying easel or something else getting tossed on top of the giveaway/throwaway/recycle pile, which now takes up three-quarters of our garage. I figure, if we're not using it here, we won't be using it once we get to Utah, so we might as well leave it behind. I may be nice about most things, but I'm a ruthless purger. Tonight, after the kids go to sleep, I plan to sneak into the playroom with a few large black bags and toss out all toys that I haven't noticed them playing with in the last few weeks.

Fortunately, we've found good homes for most of our big items, like bookshelves and dressers. Unfortunately, that means we've had a lot of books sitting around. Yesterday I went to the moving company and picked up 18 book boxes, which is about half as many as we need to get all of our books boxed up (should I be embarrassed that my cookbooks alone took up three boxes?). So I guess I get to satisfy a little bit of the packing urge as well. Someone better restrain me, or the moving fairies aren't going to have much to do when they arrive in 21 days.

7 comments:

FoxyJ said...

We're moving in a few weeks too and I've been trying to purge. But we just moved a little less than a year ago, so there isn't much left, LOL. Good luck with moving. I can't wait until some day when we can have moving fairies come. That would be so nice!

Shelly said...

Ahhh...Purging....The ultimate catharsis...I love it!!! Good luck with the move!!

Anonymous said...

Not moving, but Twanda took over my body today after a trip to the Y. I took a carload of stuff to Goodwill and have more to go! I'm so glad though that you will not be packing and moving yourselves this time!
Love, Annie

Giggles said...

I did some purging for my move last year, but the whole thing happened in a month and I was still working, so there wasn't much time for purging. My goal for this summer is to do a lot more purging in preparation for the next move.

I had a total of 23 boxes of books at my last move. And that's just me all by my lonesome. I was amazed that the young men who helped me unload (no moving fairies) couldn't think of 3 books they'd read in their lives. They were amazed that one person could have so many books.

TJ said...

let the moving fairies come!!!! they truly are amazing to watch. you just have to keep an eye on them so that they wrap your breakables well, and sometimes when you provide beverages and lunch (or even treats) they treat your stuff pretty nicely. i love watching the movers come. and then they'll even unpack you. well, mine do. (the army pays for it!!) and then they take all the packing crap away. i love it. can't wait for my stuff to arrive.:)

Tiffani said...

There's something so gratifying about seeing all of your earthly possessions neatly stacked in a big moving truck (as long as you didn't have to do the packing or stacking). We've had 5 cross-country moves and now we better be done! Here's hoping for friendly fairies that speak English and don't take too many smoking breaks...

Anonymous said...

yay, purging. Just think that means that many less boxes to unpack when you get there. I did that when we bought this house and moved out of our rental home. It was so wonderful to only move what we needed.