(the misadventures of an expatriate corporate dropout)

Monday, April 7, 2008

from chaos, order will emerge.

Before shipping, comes packing. Before packing, comes sorting. Before sorting, comes unpacking. In between all of this, there will be gin. This qualifies for Gin in my apron pocket. Trust me, much lifting, pushing, squatting and sweating are involved. honest! I mean look at the picture. How else?!

I moved to Oregon in 2004. I moved from a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house into a 600 square foot loft. And quickly. So when I moved, I packed two groupings... loft and storage. Subsequently I moved to a 2 bedroomed home in the 'burbs (big mistake, different story). My loft belongings were moved into my new home and my storage belongings were moved into my garage. And there, save for 1 or 2 boxes unpacked ... the whole lot has sat until now.

Now, part of my journey requires unpacking the garage (well wrapped and packed by professional movers ... which means forests of wrapping material). Once a box is unpacked, it must be sorted. So far I have a few groupings ... sell, donate, trash, storage ... and ... ta-DAH ... France. What you see in the picture is the start of this process.

The good news is that after 3 days of sorting, I have 7 large garbage bags of trash. 3 Large boxes of sell. 8-10 boxes of storage. And half of a box France.

Oh and another thing about that picture. It is slightly less than 1/4 of my entire garage. sigh.

I guess it has to get worse before it gets better, right? *shameless plug for reassurance that this CAN be done*

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gotta tell ya...if you haven't had to unpack the boxes in more than two years, whatever is in them YOU DON'T NEED. How about just tossing the whole lot? Save you loads of time and effort!

Non Je Ne Regrette Rien said...

ha. don't think I haven't given THAT serious thought. but it is more of a ... someday thing. It is hard to let go of certain things. Like mounds of books longing for their old bookshelves. And children's papers and toys and such, saved for pending grandkids.

Trust me - a lot of it will be tossed or sold.

Unknown said...

You can do it. I have faith! ;-)