No Mysteries Here

I ask you: is there anything more invasive and disruptive than a move? Each day has been a blur of boxes, or unboxed piles of miscellany, or haphazardly shelved and stored items that may never return to the pleasingly organized state they'd once been in. The work is physically exhausting. This house is large, the boxes heavy, and there is a lot of brute hauling and pushing and relocating. Every day is like a demonic version of a cross-fit workout. (That comparison is Andrew's. I have no idea what a cross-fit workout entails, or even how to write out "cross-fit": Cross Fit, CrossFit, crossfit, Crossfit, Cross/Fit?)

Over the past week and a half, I've laid hands on every single one of my belongings, from unmatchable lids of old sour cream containers to a pile of maternity clothes I've never been able to part with to my most treasured tiny things. I've never been this familiar with all the noise and clutter of my life. There are no mysteries to my home right now--no junk drawers, no deep corners of dark attic closets, no boxes buried underneath other boxes, no basement crawl spaces full of forgotten yard-sale finds. I did discover a box that's been sealed up since our last move, containing binders of teaching materials from 2003 and a New York Times heralding Obama's 2016 victory (insert every heartbreak and crying-face emoji HERE). That box will likely remain intact, but at least I've glimpsed its contents. 

It's a process, redistributing a life's worth of stuff. The question of where it goes is not the most difficult question--there's a space for everything, or there will be, once a couple of mild reno's are undertaken. The difficulty is in the physical work of unpacking--unwrapping every single item, bringing them to their places, and then dealing with the massive amounts of packing materials and boxes that take up more space right now than the things they housed. Our garage is full of flattened boxes and other boxes filled with flattened packing papers and a large number of boxes with which the girls have built an American Girl apartement complex. Clearing all of that is a project for another day.

Each day I empty a few boxes and try to tame a specific space. I miss being able to still my mind and think. I can't relax with so much mess around me. Small goals. We'll get there.