This was it. My official first day of preparing for departure. Although I've been preparing for the past year, today was the first real day that my focus, my "job", was to get ready. Get packed. Get informed. Get prepared. And how did I do? I think I did okay. Earlier in the day I had it in mind to just put it all off for another day or two and read, relax, sip a caramel latte, take a long walk through the icy streets, but by 2pm, the lackadaisical vibe was gone and replaced by the itch to get something done. Just from today, I can tell what aspects of preparing I thoroughly enjoy and what aspects I thoroughly do not enjoy.
Enjoyment: learning about the country and everything that goes into it, practicing the little Romanian phrases provided by the PC, and reading about the volunteer experience in Romania.
Non-enjoyment: going through my possessions and placing them in the Keep for Future Use, Take to Romania, and Sell/Donate/Give Away as Gifts (ha! kidding...sorta) piles accordingly.
I'm trying to be very strict with myself, resisting the temptation to put everything in a storage box for two years, because I know how much easier it'll be to come back to a clean slate, free of trinkets that will seem unnecessary by then. The tough part is that the majority of my trinkets have some silly meaning behind them and that's why I've kept them this long. They aren't gifts from people (those will go in the Keep pile), they're just things I've had forever, like the mugs I've had since moving out for the first time, the cookie tray I've baked hundreds of batches of cookies on, the calculator that got me through all of my college math classes. Silly as it sounds, the hard part is thinking about the good life those trinkets have had up until now and now I'm just casting them away to who knows what, crushing their little hearts and upping their chances of a hard-knock life on the streets. Craziness, I know, but that's how my mind works.
Anyways...I feel like I got a start today. I'm hoping to spend 3 hours, at the very least, each day (weekends off, of course) getting this show on the road...just a little over a month to go.
Sorry for all the sappy sentimentality.
5 comments:
By small comparison: spring cleaning
After ruthlessly giving away a scrabble game w/sentimental value I now have a maybe pile-to make myself think on it a spell (pun intended ;)
On the other hand the plastic squirrel that lit up just had to go!
As a person who gets rid of too much, married to a person who doesn't want to get rid of *anything*:
If you have any tug on your heartstrings when it's dangling over the give-away box, keep it!
Things I would not keep:
Technology...it will be osolete
Anything useful someone is going without...and you could make their life better by donating it to them
Good luck!
day two went semi-okay. not quite as productive, but i'm doing the realllly boring stuff: going through a year's worth of paid bill stubs, paycheck stubs, all the paper crap that i let pile up over the past 1.5 years. that's the great thing about moving every year or so - it forces me to go through stuff!
i already have one full bag of paper recycling...and lots more to go...and i already have a "maybe" pile started, too! ack! this part of the process stinks, but is mandatory.
the heartstrings are going to get yanked over many things, i have the feeling, but i think it's more over the fact that i'm saying goodbye to my current way of life and the comforts that accompany it than over giving my trinkets to strangers. anything that pulls too sharply will remain in my mother's care, though. like my favorite cookie sheet. :)
Trinkets are so hard to get rid of! I have a trinket box that I clean out every few years. With more distance, the truly special ones stand out, while others you wonder what the big deal was about.
Do a ruthless cleaning out every five years. Otherwise...be merciful with the tossing out.
But...then again...I'm a packrat...
ant
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