Posts Tagged ‘packing’
Vacation Planning
Like this has never happened before. The faster I go, the behind-er I get. It doesn’t surprise me, but it seems so wrong. I am quickly running out of time before I leave for a week of vacation and I find myself unable to get into gear to prepare for departure. I feel like I have been afflicted by some zombie disease. My thought process is slowing to a crawl and motivation seems to be going with it.
I am thrilled at the idea of being free of the usual daily responsibilities and spending extended time with a group of very precious people, but that has not resulted in any rush of energy toward getting valuable tasks addressed in preparation. Most notably, since my vacation will involve riding a bicycle all day long for a week, this year I failed to get enough miles on the saddle to condition my butt in advance of the trip. I may finally have found a reason to test the use of a chamois cream, but my concern is less about skin hotspots and more about tenderness from prolonged pressure on the sit bones. It’s feels like a bruise until the body adjusts and builds up the equivalence of a callous in the region.
Yesterday, as I toiled away on an unexpected kitchen sink plumbing adventure, it occurred to me that I have done very little in the way of mental preparation for the annual week of bicycling and camping that kicks off in 4 days. I think that is because the trip is something I have done many times before with a common group of precious friends. I know what to expect, so I am less inclined to fret over preparations.
Unfortunately, it is feeling like I may have swung too far in the other direction and am at risk of finding myself unprepared at the last-minute. If something ends up being neglected, I’m hoping it is a chore at home that I overlooked which I can just deal with when I return. As long as I have my bike gear, the tent and sleeping bag, and a few things to wear, I’ll be ready to vacate.
Sunday, after a bit of anxious searching, Cyndie rescued me by finding where my tent and sleeping pad were stowed. The most critical elements are beginning to accumulate into a pile in the basement, so I’m probably in better shape than my foggy mind is making me feel.
The next phase involves the irritating challenge of a nagging perception that I am forgetting something. How do you figure out what you are forgetting if you don’t know whether you are forgetting anything or not?
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Making Room
When the weather is nasty cold outside, and hours of daylight are short, one way to deal with it is to work on indoor projects. We have a project waiting for us in our basement that is finally seeing some progress. Interestingly, that progress came as a result of the fracturing of the triangular window beside our stone chimney.
In order to raise the level of interest for a builder to travel to our home to replace the broken window, we tossed in the construction of a storage room in our basement as added incentive. It worked. The replacement window is now on order and when it comes, the builder expects to be available to work on creating a walk-in storage room with built-in shelves in the space where the entertainment center once was.
When we moved in, I did some initial demolition in that corner, taking out the shelving to open up the angled space as much as possible for temporary storage. The only parts left were studs with drywall attached to them. Cyndie masterfully stowed a roomful of stuff into the small space of that corner and then hung curtains across the front to cover the cut-out spaces once filled by a television and speakers.
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In preparation of the builder taking down the studs and putting up new walls to make a more functional storage space, I pulled off the drywall and removed all the screws from the studs. Friday night, Cyndie and I removed all the stuff that was stacked behind that wall and piled it up around the basement. It is a real optical illusion of space to see that little corner empty, but the contents now appearing to consume the entire rest of the room.
We need to rearrange things now to create a clear working space for the builder, with a path for him to bring in materials, and then we will be ready when that window shows up and our project reaches the top in his queue of work.
That done, I guess it’s time to go back outside and play in the snow! How nasty can it really be out there?
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Forget It
Yesterday was a day to forget. It would be nice if I could, but I have a tendency to hang on to the angst of things when they go awry. I like to bring order from chaos. It is one of the most rewarding aspects of my day-job. I can’t solve everything, but, if by the end of a day, I have achieved putting some things in order, I have a feeling of satisfaction for my contributions.
I didn’t have much luck doing that yesterday. I am wondering if it was somehow a carry-over of my not being able to bring order to the many projects going on at home, just at a time when I was leaving town. For sure, I was rattled by that discovery of a problem with the septic system.
In the morning, I woke over an hour before my alarm, and couldn’t get back to sleep. Of course, my mind was abuzz with preparations for my travel, needing to get ready for work, and get the house ready to be vacant for a couple of days, and to make sure to bring everything I would need for my trip. Also, there was a lot of work waiting for me on my desk at the day-job, so I went in early. I was thinking that I could use that early time to tackle one of the piles and get it processed before events of the day take over.
I never had that chance. Things unraveled early, and everything I seemed to try to get in order just became more chaotic. I had problems with my problems. Really, it was a total disaster. Maybe one of the most difficult days I’ve had, in terms of trying to bring order to chaos.
What can you do? I gave in. I let the chaos lay. I had somewhere to be. I had a deadline to be at the airport. It didn’t help that I stumbled upon a middle-of-the-afternoon traffic backup due to a stalled car. Really? Was this some kind of stress test I was being given over the last few days?
I sure hope it ends soon.
The good news for now is that I have arrived, safe and sound, at my destination, with Cyndie, in Arizona. I really have no idea what is in store for me today, at the introductory Epona workshop that Cyndie’s cadre of apprentices is giving. Maybe it will be a continuation of the stress test for me, but I don’t plan to frame it as such.
I am going to forget the day-job stress, and focus on the new adventure before me. Maybe the difficulties I have faced in the previous two days were just to put me in a place where I will get more from this weekend than I could possibly imagine. I’m going to aim to be open to whatever the lesson is for me here.
Step One
Well, we got the first part out of the way. The old house is empty. That was quite a day. The truck showed up bright and early, and they pretty much worked straight through to around 6 p.m. carrying a few precious pieces of furniture, and way too many boxes of crap. They pretty much filled the trailer up. We have accumulated too much stuff, no doubt about it. Take away my uncluttering badge, now. I have not earned one.
With a little luck, today’s experience will encourage us to be more aware, but I fear the added space of our new home may foil my dreams of becoming clutter-free. I know that it influenced some of my packing decisions regarding what to discard and what to take with me. I might find a use for the stuff, and I will have plenty of places to store things.
It has me thinking of the photo book by Peter Menzel, “Material World,” where he captured portraits of families around the world, posing with most of their possessions placed strategically around them. I shudder to think what our portrait would look like.
One humorous moment yesterday was when the movers popped out the front door with a dresser on their dolly, obviously laboring. One of the guys pulled open a drawer to see if we had left it full of clothes. It was empty. They were surprised at how heavy it was. My comment was, “They don’t make ’em like they used to!”
My siblings will appreciate that it was the dresser from our parents’ bedroom set.
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Today, we will do a final clean-up of the old property, and make a purchase of a device to give us a mobile internet connection that we will test on our new property for a couple of weeks.
Tomorrow will be step two: the closings.
Getting Closer
The reality of my situation is, I have only 1 weekend left to finish packing. Since we were off gallivanting around the countryside this past Saturday, I was left with only Sunday, to tackle something significant. I chose the garage. Next weekend, it will be the remaining portion of the basement that gets my full attention.
I’m feeling okay with the progress in the garage, but I didn’t quite complete the task of getting it ready for movers to just pick things up and load. What I did accomplish was, getting my hands, at least once, on everything stored along the walls, or on a shelf. Some things made it no further than to a pile on the floor, but at least they are accounted for and are now moved from where they were previously stored. I still need to bind handles together, and otherwise wrap things for maximum carrying efficiency.
While going through drawers in a cabinet at the back of our garage, I discovered one of my stashes of zip-lock bags. Then I found another stash, and then another. I seem to be a hoarder of zip-lock bags! At the day-job, there are a wide array of sizes of heavy-duty bags that I hang on to for general storage, or for camping and bike trips, and even for moving! Just last week, I brought home a new pile of really good bags, thinking I could use them to dump all the things that have collected in my top dresser drawer.
Obviously, I had lost track of the fact that I already have bags upon bags stored up for just such an occasion. Maybe I should let Cyndie in on the whereabouts of my zip-lock bag stashes, so she can actually put them to use, instead of my just storing them indefinitely.
Let me take this opportunity to say that for every one thing I pack, Cyndie is doing tens of things. She helped me in the garage some on Sunday, and then scoured the yard to claim every last item we had outside that wasn’t a permanent fixture. She drained and coiled all our hoses, which I particularly appreciate.
Every day, she is packing more things than I even knew existed in our home, while I am stuck toiling away at the day-job. Meanwhile, she is managing the communications and documents involved with our closings.
Yesterday, I watched a handful of emails that she copied me on, as she continued to carry out the navigation of demands from agencies trying to get everything they need for our two closings in one day. I am at a loss as to who is who, what documents need to be prepared, and in what order.
The closer we get to the big day of name signing, the more I realize that I couldn’t have accomplished this without her.
Fascinating Stuff
In the process of packing up two-and-a-half decades of accumulation around our house, Cyndie has uncovered reams of precious records that document our children’s young lives. Fascinating stuff, all of it. She has an excellent ability to quickly browse through mounds of documents, which is a good thing, since she is so good at saving mounds of documents. I’m a bit more clumsy in my review. Progress would slow to a crawl if it were left for me to sort through it all.
We are at that point when it is time to choose whether to continue to save, or to finally discard. It has me wondering about the ultimate value of keeping pieces of ourselves from the past. It is a bit of a conundrum for someone with an interest in genealogy. In generations to come, such records will offer valuable insight to any descendents engaged in research of their ancestry.
Reading some of the things our children wrote for school assignments also has me thinking about what it must be like for teachers who process hundreds of kid’s thoughts, year after year. A saintly act. I have the benefit of knowing how the kids turned out, so the drama and angst of the young, developing minds is somewhat muted. I can’t imagine having to read the writings of vast numbers of frustrated students, in real-time, that teachers annually face.
The papers I found myself reading may have been assignments to practice writing, or demonstrate grammar, and seemed to capture a snapshot of a young person’s developing mind. When I read what our children wrote, I became aware of how far they have come since that time. These childhood writings no longer applied to them. It felt almost unfair to their present adult selves, to be reading what they thought back then. I say ‘almost,’ as in, not entirely. Part of me, certainly, as a parent, thoroughly enjoys the experience of witnessing the range of growth they have achieved.
If Cyndie hadn’t saved it, I wouldn’t have been given this chance.
So, do we continue saving it?
I’m torn. A large part of me is of a mind to leave all that behind and focus on living in the current moment. Most likely, if our kids don’t choose to hang on to any of it, we will pare it down to a fraction of the total, and preserve just a few pieces. A compromise, to appease the sentimental parent in both of us. However, I sense doing so would just be delaying the inevitable moment when we have reason to purge accumulation again sometime in the future.
It will be fine with me if we never have to pack for a move like this again!
Masterful Planning
We are eking out progress, one day at a time. When our buyers make one more request of us, to appease their insurance company’s needs for in-depth documentation, we scour our files and produce the goods, from 16-years ago! Full speed ahead.
When I come home from the day-job, it is a relief for me to hear Cyndie report the variety of places in our house that she has vanquished. Closets packed, basement storage, down to the last few things. I am making progress, vicariously through Cyndie.
Our lovely children have both checked in, preparing to navigate the final days, and stop over to pick up the last of their stuff. We have received clearance from Cyndie’s parents to store some of our delicate and valuable items at their house during the transition.
We still haven’t found a home for the extra refrigerator in the basement, but what’s the worst that could happen? We take it with us. I’m not too worried.
We didn’t have a master plan when we moved into our house in Eden Prairie 25 years ago. Over the span of time that we have lived here, we shaped it into the home we wanted. I have every confidence we will be able to accomplish the same thing at our new home. The secret ingredient is time.
We don’t need to have it perfectly (whatever that is) figured out in time to tell the movers where to put everything. Get our stuff from here to there, place it somewhere safe and dry, and we’ll eventually figure out what will work best for us.
Seriously. That’s not just my struggles with planning talking. That’s my knowledge that we’ve done it before, and we will be able to do it again, and more!
Packing Drill
You know the drill. We are packing, yes we are. There is so much to be dealt with that I find myself a little overwhelmed. I like to have a plan, but I am just a peon compared to the way Cyndie processes things, and her methods tend to swamp any thoughts I might have about how to organize the monumental task.
My methods thus far have been a bit random. I went into our closet and pulled out all of my stuff, filling duffels and travel bags in my collection, with clothes I will keep, but don’t expect to wear in the next month. Last night, I already needed to dig into the bags to pull out proper attire for a wedding we attended.
I gathered all of my camping gear and put it in one box, clearly labeling the box, before Cyndie could mix my things with hers and pack it away where I may never find it again. Obviously, my methods are only a bit random, as I am partially operating in a mode of self-preservation by preemptively packing specific things I wish to have some control over.
This is the first time in my life when I have had to make an entire move in one large trip, and thus, ever needed to have everything prepared in advance for someone else to load and unload. It is a different beast to be reckoned with.
Friday, after having pulled every last item out of our electronic entertainment cupboard, except the primary components, themselves, I ended up with a pile of items I didn’t know whether to keep, or throw. The stack remains on the floor in that room. It consists of VHS tapes that probably tell the stories of our lives, but which no longer match the equipment we have in place to view them. More than once, we planned to have them converted to digital, but that keeps not happening.
There are also a variety of old software discs and books, which probably deserve to be discarded, but seem so un-trash-like that it is going to take an extra day or two before I can convince myself to just jettison them.
Yesterday, in effort to avoid that pile of stuff, I redirected my focus to purging some files. I dug out the manuals we have saved. I want to gather all of the things that pertain to the appliances of this house, to leave for the new owners. It was a kick finding how many documents we have been storing for items that are long gone from our lives. We giggled our way through them in a trip down memory lane.
There was the warning sheet about assembling the crib properly. That piece of furniture is long gone. Does anyone else keep the little flyers from their Conair curling irons and blow dryers? Or their Casio watches? Apparently, we have bought a lot of those devices over the years. Cyndie couldn’t remember how long it has been since we had a hot-air popcorn popper. We still have the manual for it.
I am hoping that the discovery of all these documents that we have never, ever pulled from the files for reference, …that we wouldn’t even think to look for in the file of manuals, will inform our future decisions on what deserves to be kept, and what doesn’t.
Finally, Progress
One of the things that feeds my hesitation to get underway with projects –like the most prominent one before me right now– is a lack of a clear plan. I don’t like to just jump in and get under way without enough forethought to avoid unnecessary inefficiencies, like moving furniture multiple times, or missing a step that should have occurred earlier in a process.
I don’t have a firm grasp on either the big picture, or the individual details of the process we will be going through to sell our house and move. I have what I would describe as a rudimentary vision of preparing our house for sale, while also shopping for a new property, and figuring out what to do with our belongings if the timing doesn’t seamlessly align.
Most immediately, we intend to spruce up our current living quarters. I’m told we will replace some carpet, remove some wallpaper, and paint some rooms. The first thing I was planning to do was take down everything hanging on our walls. One thing that has delayed my start with that project was my not being able to visualize what to do with everything I take down.
I started to collect some boxes and packing material, but quickly realized it will be unlikely that many of our items will fit into boxes. The items that could fit are going to require a lot more boxes than I have so far. I researched how moving companies suggest preparing framed pictures. We are going to need a LOT of bubble wrap, too.
Yesterday, in order to make some progress, I decided to just stack pictures for the time being. I ended up with multiple stacks in about 5 different rooms.
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Then I went throughout the entire house removing nails and picture hangers from the walls. The person who hangs most of the items on the walls in our family (not me) tends to use a wide variety of nails, screws, and hooks.
Once I got started, I decided to give some of the old wallpaper in our bedroom a little tug. Most of it came free without even needing to get the old glue wet. On one wall, there was older wallpaper underneath, but the other 3 walls had none.
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It looks a little crazy, but at least I finally got the first task underway. Unfortunately, I’ve still got a LOT of work to do, protecting all the picture frames I took down. And after I accomplish that, I’ve got to figure out where I’m going to stash them!
I’d sure like to avoid having to move them more times than is absolutely necessary.
Travel Day!
Honestly, I really am thrilled to the core with anticipation for our adventure in Portugal. But I am not fond of anything to do with packing or deciding what to bring, and most of all, keeping track of where the heck I ended up packing the things I finally decided to include.
I would like to show up at my destination with nothing but a modest sized bag that contains everything I could possibly want or need for any and all weather conditions, and know exactly where to find any little thing I brought along.
My habit is to discover a wonderful pocket somewhere in some bag that works just perfect for something I want to bring along, and then never again be able to remember or find where that place was. That becomes exacerbated by the security routines and airline regulations that force me to pack in specific ways that have nothing to do with the way I want to use items, nor how or where I want them to be when I reach my destination.
I am going to have a wonderful trip, regardless the travel hassles, but every time I go through the packing process, I am reminded why it is I am just as happy staying home when offered options to travel, or not.
As they say in Minnesota, either option is not too bad. Whatever. Bring on the airports!
Relative Something 