The Experiment Begins

[rebeccmeister]

This morning, after I took care of some farmer's market and housemate duties, scrottie helped me pack all of my large furniture objects into a moving pod. The plan is for stuff to stay in the moving pod for a couple of months, while I figure out where I will be going next. Presumably, Nebraska, but it seems unwise to me to haul all my worldly possessions there without knowing, with slightly higher certainty, where or not I'll have employment. Renting storage space in a moving pod is only marginally more expensive than space in a storage facility, in the event that any of you ever wind up having to weigh the various options.

I then spent the rest of the afternoon shoving boxes in every single nook and cranny of the pod. If packing boxes is like a game of Tetris, then Moving Pod Tetris is the hardest, highest level, and the progression feels quite similar to whenever you reach the level where the pieces just keep coming way too fast and you can't quite keep up.

I had to force myself to stop and rest a couple of times. It's pretty warm out these days. Pickles and refrigerated water tasted good.

However! I managed to pack ~97% of the stuff I intended to pack in the pod, in the pod. I'd ordered two, just in case, but one will do. I hope it weighs under the maximum 2500 pounds. Otherwise, I suppose I can claim that I actually *do* own a TON of stuff!

And now, for the next four months, I'll live with a simplified subset of my possessions. I have this feeling that part of me is going to appreciate the simplicity. However, I'm pretty certain that another part of me is going to regret having packed away the blender.

Perhaps the pod-packing will persuade me that I can get rid of the four boxes full of academic publications, too. It has been a tough call to make - I've hand-written notes on many of the pubs, and some of them aren't available electronically, so they really do deserve a thorough going-over before tossing the bulk to the recycler.

I also keep thinking about The Little House on the Prairie, and other stories of homesteading in the US. I suspect a covered wagon is much, much smaller than a moving pod. So, where did all the stuff come from, this time around? I can't take it with me, in the end, so someone will eventually wind up having to go through all of it, unless I spare them the chore by keeping things simple.

But then - many of the objects are reminders of memories, or art pieces, or tools for the kitchen or otherwise. At least some deserve to stay.

Comments

[trifold-flame.livejournal.com]

I say it is too early to prepare for your death, and that you should keep your crap around anyway. My family has always kept a ton of crap around. That's why we have so many awesome things from the turn of the last century- because no smartasses gave our good stuff to Goodwill when it became unfashionable.

While I think your experiment in simple living will be an interesting time in your life- I underwent a similar thing when I moved down to Bloomington to teach for a semester and I found I enjoyed it- I do not believe that minimalism is necessarily awesome. I would rather have my great-great grandmother's embroidery, and our hand-carved glass from Germany. Exactly the kinds of things that were, at one point, totally worthless.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

There are a number of items I'm holding on to that will have that sort of value, but not all that many, really - the Navajo rug my parents gave me as a graduation gift falls into that category, but it also packs down to a small size marvelously well.

Most of my belongings either came from thrift stores, or are things that I made myself, so while I suppose many of them may have some value, I don't know how much of that value will really transfer over. The ceramics are an interesting category, too - I've kept and cherished a number of pieces made by sytharin, and I've kept and use many of the things I've made, but I'm also amazed by how many ceramic things I still have, even after trying to pare down the collection. I think other people might see some value in things like the ceramic boot and prickly pear vase, but they'd probably shrug their shoulders at the chipped porcelain mug that I drink coffee out of almost every day.

The boxes of academic papers - seriously, those can be burned, right? (well, recycled). I'm just waiting for a point where I have an office, so I can stack them up and look important. ;-)

I should also go through the miscellaneous boxes of mementos sometime soon. I'm thinking that, some year, my Halloween costume is going to be, "WINNER!!" and I'm going to wear ALL of the stupid medals from various rowing things all at once, and then I'll get rid of most of them (just a handful of them are from meaningful races or events). And then I'll recycle most of the generic greeting cards, and will just save the letters and such.