Tonight I submitted my 60 days’ notice to the property manager informing him of our decision to move.
Never mind that Husband might not have a job after September. Never mind that I hate packing. Never mind that we’ll have to somehow get all of our insanely heavy oak furniture into a new place, which will inevitably be on the third floor.
Oh, there it is. The sudden, palpable fear that perhaps we’ve made a huge mistake. That sinking feeling right at the base of your stomach, making it seem as though you might give birth to the guilt any second. We’re treading dangerous waters here, and there’s no turning back.
Okay, so I exaggerate from time to time. And, in fact, I think we’ve made an excellent decision, aside from the fact that we will have to pack all of our belongings up and put them into a truck and drive them to a different place and then — this is the really ridiculous part — take them out and arrange them in essentially the exact same manner they were in to begin with. Seriously who thought of this? Our bed’s weight is in the thousands, which, incidentally, is how much it cost. (We plan to die on that bed, hand-in-hand. Also, it does not actually weigh thousands of pounds, but when I go to tuck the fitted sheet around the edges, it seems as though it does.)
Image courtesy of aireloom.com
But this thing had to happen. We live in a wonderful apartment, with only one small drawback (that’s a pun): it’s the size of a storage closet. And while the lightning-fast Internet and free cable and underground parking are enticing, the facts that I have to turn sideways to walk on my side of the bed and that we can’t even fit a full-sized couch, much less a table or chairs or anything else in our living room makes us realize it’s time to upgrade.
No, seriously. It’s a loveseat or it’s a table. It’s not both.
We even bought an Xbox without a Kinect last Black Friday because, even with the Zoom attachment, the only way we could actually utilize it would be if we removed the coffee table and forest green leather loveseat and crammed ourselves up against the wall, using minimal torso movements and relying largely on our extremities.
Perhaps we should have bought a Wii. Or a Nintendo Power Pad.
There’s something beautiful and terrible about moving. It signifies change and, generally speaking, growth (except for that time I moved out of a 3-bedroom townhouse into my parent’s place because I was broke and on a slippery slope to sheer stupidity (alliteration — guys, it’s just so cool.) You don’t want to be the 26-year old having guys pick you up for dates from your parent’s house.) I like laying in our bed at night, feeling a little claustrophobic because a bookcase, desk, dresser, and trunk are all sharing our already limited space (it’s kind of like an obstacle course. We should invest in some laser tag paraphernalia STAT before we move), night-dreaming about granite countertops and a second bedroom and — I’m getting a little misty-eyed — a storage space. But I’ve yet to meet another person who isn’t filled with some sort of sick dread considering how long it will take to pack it all up. Packing makes you feel like the camera crew of “Hoarders” is going to knock on your door any minute — don’t even try to deny it. You know what I’m talking about, and I know you do.
Photo courtesy of unclutterer.com
Kitchen stuff. Seriously the most ridiculous houseware items to fit inside a box. I believe the last time I moved, I finally opened the kitchen drawers and threw all of it into large Rubbermaid containers because at the end of the day, no matter how much you may have excelled at calculator Tetris as a high schooler, there’s no way you’re getting the spatulas and whisks and biscuit cutters to fit snugly together.
We bought bicycles after moving into this apartment. That was stupid. Bikes are stupid.
We’re not moving into a house, in case you’re wondering. This isn’t a cool “Hey we just bought our first house!” blog post — that’s for grown-ups who are ready to take the icy plunge into the cold, cruel world of home-ownership and mortgages. (I envy these people with every fiber of my being. I want a house. We’re not getting one for awhile.) For the most part I’m very content living in apartments. There’s the whole someone-else-will-take-care-of-everything side of things and the whole there-are-no-dogs-pooping-in-our-front-yard-because-there-are-no-yards-or-dogs situation. I can vacate the premises and someone else will clean it up for me (yeah, I’m one of those people who would rather lose a deposit than spend hours in an empty space, wiping walls and cabinet interiors.)
Image courtesy of merrymaids.com
Knowing that I only have 59 days to be out of here … I think I’ll start packing now. Or I might just throw everything away and become a minimalist.
The Low Point 