Coming Unmoored

I’ve been a little lax on entries lately because I’m in full-gear right now coordinating my move. This certainly won’t be an award-winning entry, but here’s a quick update on what I’ve been up to…

The Dumpster

For starters, I never really got fully unpacked from my move a year ago into the place I currently live in Tucson. I had to finish un-packing to figure out what I wanted to take with me. So I have a bunch of packing materials that aren’t reusable and just general junk it’s unlikely I’m going to be able to find a home for.

I’ve got more garbage than my regular bin can handle. Especially since my garbage man is a highly-sensitive old coot who refuses to touch my can if anything has remotely upset its fung shui. I’m lucky if he’ll empty thing one week in two and that’s when I’m minding my manners and not overloading it.

So I did a little research and discovered I can rent a larger trash receptacle from local Waste Management. What I’m renting is not big enough to be referred to as a “roll-off”. It’s more like an aspiring roll-off, but it’s the same general concept.

I now have a lot more room to toss stuff with impunity. Well, other than feeling guilty that it’s going to end up in a landfill, that is. Which is why I’m trying to give away whatever I’m not taking with me, first.

The Albuquerque Run

This is the part where I pulled a Captain Kirk and cheated on the downsizing. Thanks to my boyfriend Charlie’s incredibly generous nature–and 3,000+ square foot home, much of which is empty–I am going to be storing my camping and historical reenactment gear with him. I’m am enough of a geek that this constitutes a little under half of all the worldly possessions I intend to keep.

I rented a 10 foot U-Haul for this part of the move and it was roughly 2/3rds full with my lackadaisical packing skills. (It got more efficient the closer I got to the door because I got worried about whether I’d run out of room.)

Last weekend, I drove this stuff out and got it situated at Charlie’s. I was a little nervous at first about driving a vehicle that big. Especially without a rear-view mirror. However, the U-Haul actually has a better turn radius than my PT Cruiser and a quite a cushy interior. Equipped with my iPod loaded with books I’ve been wanting to get to, it really wasn’t bad. Well, other than sticker-shock when I filled up at the pump, anyway.

Rumi came with me so that Charlie could cat-sit him for the next two weeks. The kitty was getting too stressed-out with all the packing and I didn’t want to risk him being underfoot with student movers. (Not that the U-Haul ride did his nerves any good in the short run.)

As Charlie is the ultimate bachelor with one lone beer and a bunch of dead plants around his house, I make him put Rumi on the webcam every morning so I can confirm my child is still alive and well.

So far it’s Charlie who’s the worse for wear not the cat. Rumi seems to be amusing himself by doing his “Where the Wild Things Are” celebratory dance on Charlie’s stomach at 3 AM every morning.

The Great Giveaway

I have a lot of stuff that’s not going with me to either Portland or Albuquerque. I’m probably going to place the higher-priced furniture I don’t manage to sell on my own in a consignment shop. However, I’ve also come up with my own version of Freecyling in bulk–I’ve invited a bunch of local friends and college students to come by my place on three evenings and take whatever they want from the stuff that’s not coming with me.

In other words, I’m having a garage sale where everything is free. All people “pay” is the effort to come take the stuff away. I’ve got a bunch of craft supplies, camping gear, and old $20 bookshelves I’m hoping to get rid of through this tactic.

The first night of The Great Giveaway is tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Portland Run

Here’s the piece of the move that has my mother writing “WORRY!!!” in big red letters on multiple days of her calendar. (That is what she does whenever my brother or I choose to do something she considers woefully imprudent with the bodies she never hesitates to remind us she spent nine months growing. You know–things like shark diving, eating fugu at a questionable establishment, or driving across country as a single woman in a U-Haul.)

Tomorrow, I start driving a 17 foot U-Haul up to Portland with my worldly possessions that will be remaining with me in the floating home.

With all my past moves after the age of 20 I always hired someone to do the packing and transporting. This time, I really needed to do the packing myself because it was my chance to examine every item and decide what to eliminate. I got rid of a lot, but I have a feeling I’m still going to want to go through the same operation again on the other end when I’m unpacking. (Which is not to say I won’t also be buying some new smaller-scale furniture when I get there.)

Anyway, I’ve spent the last week packing up all my stuff in preparation for heading to Portland. That in itself was an adventure. See my notes on packing tape below.

Today, Aaron Brothers’ Moving is helping me load everything into the U-Haul. It turns out that the Aaron Brothers are, in fact, actually brothers. Young, polite, well-educated brothers who can intelligently discuss things like Mahler and Strad violins. Oh, and one of them was insightful enough to compliment my choice in hair color. I like these guys. They’re definitely a step up from Daryl and his John Deere moving cap who moved me a year ago and begrudged me one small chicken in the backyard. They even handled the crazy lady who wanted to photograph her loaded U-Haul with tact and grace.

Tomorrow morning I hit the road to Portland. It’s roughly 1500 miles between Tucson and Portland, so I’m breaking the trip into 500 miles a day. If everything stays on schedule, I’ll be unloading the truck Sunday. (Hopefully, I’ll get as lucky with the student movers on that end.) Everything is going into a storage unit until construction is done on the house. I meet with my contractor Sunday afternoon, drop off the truck, stay at one of the airport hotels, and fly home Monday. If need be, I can also push back my flight. I hate Southwest’s cattle-call loading but I love their flexibility on flights.

I have next week to finish cleaning up the place in Tucson and deal with my remaining possessions.

That should pretty much bring you up-to-date on things as they currently stand. Wish me luck.

And Now for a Brief Word from Your Sponsor on the Evils of Packing Tape…

Let me just say, that whatever gene it is that enables one to handle packing tape with any degree of deftness I don’t have it. Wherever this gene might be located on the chromosome, I suspect it’s next-door neighbors to the gene which allows people to unfurl cellophane and successfully cover food without trouble because I don’t have that one either.

Several of the articles of packing tips I read recommended not skimping when it comes to selecting your packing tape. None of these articles, however, mention how to assess the quality of said packing tape.

I ended up ordering all my packing supplies from an outfitter online. As all the other packing materials seemed fine, I was hoping the tape was, too. No such luck. The stuff was evil. It kept shredding and sticking to the roll. And when I did manage to tape a box, the tape would peel up by the next morning.
Finally, with much creative verbal expression, I pitched all the tape from the online outfitter, went to OfficeMax and picked up a box of the most expensive stuff on the shelf, gambling that the price-point might mean it was, in fact, better.

The new tape is indeed stronger and far more sticky. This, however, presents its own unique set of problems. I have managed to repeatedly tape myself to boxes. And, in one particularly sleepy moment, I managed to tape my hands TOGETHER. I had a brief instant of panic in which all I could see was the Tucson Star headline: “Women starves to death in central Tucson due to unfortunate packing tape accident” before I managed to wrest myself free.

And you don’t even want me to try to describe the catastrophe with the wardrobe boxes. I’m just grateful it happened in the privacy of my own home.

Long story short? Hire movers if there’s any way you can swing it.

“Holding on to old books doesn’t allow you to create space for new ideas and ways of thinking to come into your life.”

–Karen Kingston, Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui

A few days ago I did the inconceivable. I turned in three car-loads worth of books and CD’s. It translated into $1000 trade-in credit. It’s a very rough estimate, but I’m guessing I brought over $8,000 worth of merchandise into the store. And I still kept over half my collection.

Clearly, I’m into books. And, as you can probably imagine, it’s not easy for me to let them go. I take pleasure in being surrounded by them in my home. I like the way they look. I like running my fingertips across their spines when I’m browsing for something to read. Their presence makes me feel like I’m surrounded by old friends.

My brother, Chris, was the one blessed with a near-photographic memory. Mine is only good enough to have a decent idea what book something came out of. I like having the actual source at my fingertips so I can go back and look up the pertinent points.

Even with the amount of pleasure I take in my books, I’ve always been a little mystified at how emotionally grueling I find it to cull my collection. I’d rather than give up my entire stash of Cadbury Flake than a book. Projects like BookCrossing are the stuff of nightmares for me. I mean, who, in the name of all things holy, willingly “sets a book free”??

In trying to formulate a plan for downsizing my belongings, I bought a few books on decluttering. (Yay! More books!) In one of them I came across a wonderful section talking about some of the most common reasons people resist getting rid of books. (I could tell you which one except I no longer have the books. Sniff.)

The explanation that felt the most emotionally-true to me is that some people associate books with the knowledge contained within them. On some unconscious level they believe that by giving away the book, they’re giving away part of their stockpile of knowledge. Bingo. I put high stock in knowledge and sure as heck don’t want to lose any I’ve garnered over the years.

Rationally, I know the information I found the most moving has stayed with me. I don’t need the aid of pieces of paper to retain it. And now that I understand what’s going on at an unconscious level, I’m willing to grit my teeth and try an experiment by letting going the less-cherished half of my collection.

Of course, I have the added motivation of needing to reduce some serious poundage of books in order not to overwhelm the float of my new house (which has, in fact, happened to a book editor in Seattle). I”ll be quick to note, too, that I didn’t let anything go that I would have trouble acquiring a new copy, should I find its absence too painful.

Just the same, I’m expecting serious withdrawal tremors to hit sometime soon. As it is, I’ve already caught myself reaching several times for books I’ve either packed or given away. It’s not a comfortable feeling, I tell ya. I’ll let you know how I hold up over time.

While it pains me to admit it, I’m aware that not all of my friends are as enamored with my cat as I am. So I’m trying hard to limit myself to about a picture a week. Here’s my favorite from the past week…

When I first started to sort through my books, packing some and setting some aside to turn in for credit, Rumi thought the process of was great fun. There were lots of new boxes to hop in and out of, dusty shelves to explore, piles of books to kick over when Mom wasn’t looking. But after two days of this, the kitten hit overload. He crawled onto the loveseat (his favorite comfort spot), wrapped his tail around himself, and proceeded to suck his paw for a couple of hours.

I’ve reached the overload point a few times myself already and could completely empathize. It made for a cute picture, though. (Now if I can just figure how to take a picture of him with both the flash on and his eyes open.)

“Nothing motivates you more to clear the clutter from your home than boxing up all of your belongings.”

–Unclutterer.com

A lot of the decluttering manuals will encourage you to tackle small projects slowly over time so as not to get overwhelmed with the enormity of the task ahead. After all, you didn’t accumulate all this STUFF overnight, it’s probably not wise to induce cardiac arrest by trying to get rid of it overnight, either.

Unfortunately, the slow-and-easy plan works less well when you’re facing a one-month time frame to move yourself and your (hopefully reduced) belongings into living quarters less than half the size of where you are now. Drastic circumstances call for drastic measures and all that rot.

My apologies if my frequency of entries have been a little thin recently and continue to be so over the next few weeks. I’m having to work hard and creatively to divest myself of a lot of stuff in a short period of time. And, as mentioned already, I tend to move slower these days than in my hyper-ambitious youth.

But let me re-cap some of what I’ve accomplished so far in the last couple of weeks:

• I’ve sold $26,000 worth of furniture, musical instruments, and personal items.

• I’ve Freecycled almost as many low-dollar items.

• I’ve given a few cherished pieces of furniture and musical instruments to friends who I know will appreciate them.

• I turned in enough books and CD’s to the local used bookstore to have ended up with $1000 in credit. That’s a lot of freaking books to give away. Especially for someone who hoards books the way a dragon does treasure.

• I’ve donated fifteen garbage bags full of clothing, bedding, towels, and assorted linens to a local charity

• I took two full carloads of non-recyclable garbage to the dump.

Oh, and because I am much more talented at acquiring stuff than getting rid of it, I’ve created a photo album to document my progress. Completely geeky and probably uninteresting to anyone other than myself, I know.

Anyway, that was the first, easy pass at decluttering. I think it’s going to get rougher from here. If there happens to be a patron saint of declutterers and you’re feeling especially kindhearted, please say a prayer to him or her for me.

“If you’re tempted to keep something because it was expensive, remember the difference between value and cost. Value is what something is worth. You spent a lot of money on it. To throw it away would mean admitting that the money was wasted.

Now you need to think about the cost. What is it costing you to keep this item? How much space? How much energy? What about the peace of mind that comes from having a clean home full of things you use?

You one made a decision to purchase this expensive thing that you never use. Now, if you keep it, you’ll be throwing good space after bad money.”

–Peter Walsh, It’s All Too Much

Getting rid of anything is not easy for me. If you haven’t already figured that out, you soon will based simply on the number of ongoing entries from me whinging on this subject. One particular area of decluttering is especially challenging for me, however–where the item cost a lot of money and there’s no easy way to recoup the expense.

I hate, hate, hate admitting that I spent a lot of money on something from which I am not getting much use or value. My standard, more-than-a-little disfunctional way of dealing with this is to park the item in a corner somewhere in the misguided hope that I will either A) start using it on a regular basis like I originally intended or B) come up with some clever way to recoup the money I’m out.

About five years ago, Sean, a male friend of mine who’s an accountant, tried to explain the concept of “sunk costs” to me. Sunk costs are where costs have been incurred and which cannot easily be recovered. The deed is over and done and it’s been at a price. In contrast to this, you also have variable costs. The amount of these costs will change based on what you decide to do going forward.

Any good, cold-blooded accountant or microeconomist will tell you that only variable costs should be considered in making decisions about future actions. (Or, in idiot-simple-speak: don’t throw good money after bad, stupid!)

Sean was trying to get me to understand the concept of sunk costs by way of explaining why, even though he’d spent the last two years working really, really hard with his live-in girlfriend to make their relationship work, he didn’t think that should factor in to his decision whether or not he should continue to try. And that, in fact, he’d decided it was best if he simply cut things off and got on with his life.

In retrospect, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I was flabbergasted at the time by Sean’s description of his thinking process. I mean, he’d fought SO HARD to make his relationship work, how could he simply walk away NOW?

Which, brings me back to my staggering pile of possessions… I have an enormously difficult time emotionally separating myself in situations that have proven costly to me up to the present. I keep hoping that, if I just hang in there long enough, I will find a way to recoup my losses and end up back in the black. (I mean, hell, after much long-suffering on the part of the heroine it always works out in the movies…)

It’s taken me to almost the age of 40 to come to terms with the fact that it rarely, if ever, works out that way in real life, with either relationships or material possessions. I’m far better off cutting my losses rather than throwing good energy after bad. But, man, it’s hard to admit I’ve gone and invested in something stupid–be it the hunky but totally unreliable guy snoring in bed next to me or the cute, little Karmann Ghia parked out front that runs without problems one day out of every five.

The fact that I’m about to move into a place less than half the size of where I live now is helping to provide momentum in cutting some of my losses, thing-wise. However, I’m noticing particular reluctance in getting rid of high-dollar items I bought near the end of my relationship with my ex-husband in a misguided effort to comfort myself. These came largely out of my own funds but I still felt pretty defensive at the time about purchases he labeled as “frivolous” or “unnecessary”. By getting rid of these items now, I feel like I’m admitting he was right. And I can’t say I like that terribly much.

Of course, the alternative is to live with a bunch of items that no longer serve me. Or, even worse, are continuing to cost me–in physical space, emotional energy, and money to maintain–when I allow them to remain in my life.

I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it’s time to stop the bleeding. So, item by unused item, I’m gritting my teeth, writing off my losses, and getting them out of my life.

In my attempts to streamline my belongings in preparation for my upcoming move to Portland, I’ve been using Freecycle to rid myself of some larger items that probably aren’t worth enough money to try to sell.

For those non-self-professed-tree-huggers who’ve been living in a cave for the past couple of years, Freecycle is a grassroots, nonprofit movement of people that promotes the reuse of items amongst the members of it’s local communities.

Let’s say Joe gets sick of looking at the plaid couch his cat tortured all through college. Joe posts on his local Freecycle group list “OFFER: plaid couch. Some mild wear.” Someone else reads Joe’s post and offers to come take the item off his hands. Joe unloads his couch without having to feel guilty that he’s contributing to a landfill somewhere. The new owner gets a couch for only a little effort.

I think this is a marvelous concept. When I first started listing items on Freecycle I wanted to give away, I felt happily virtuous. Unfortunately, like many of the wonderful things civilization has dreamed up over the years, the system starts to break down when you factor in the darker elements of human nature.

I would like to think that most days this entry would be a calmly-worded article titled “Etiquette Tips for People Using Freecycle”. But I’m crabby today, so you’re getting my unedited, bitch-list of problems I’ve encountered with Freecycle to-date…

1. People who can’t read. My local Freecycle group uses a Yahoo list to advertise items being offered. When an item is claimed, you are expected to post a second email saying the item has been taken. Usually items on Freecycle go in under a minute if you’re on top of things. I’m on top of things. So, at most, there may be a post or two between my initial “OFFER” email and the “TAKEN”. Even still, the average item I’ve posted garners somewhere between 10 and 30 emails from people asking if the item is still available. These continue arriving for several DAYS after the item was originally offered. I have had to go so far as to set up a separate email box so that my regular email doesn’t get inundated with these inquiries.

2. People who can’t write. The typical email I get from someone interested in an item reads like it was writing by E.E. Cummings on large amounts of crack.

3. People who don’t show. At least half the time someone has told me they’d pick up an item on a specific time/day, they either do not show at all or they arrive on something like a bicycle to pick up something unmanageably large–like a queen size futon and frame–and things than proceed to devolve into a 5-day logistical nightmare. (And this is after I make sure they know the dimensions and weight of the item they’re picking up.)

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but there seem to be a lot of people using Freecycle who, either by choice or necessity, don’t own cars. They commit to taking items when they have NO idea how they’re going to transport them. But instead of telling you that up front, they come up with more and more creative explanations on why they couldn’t show when they said they would.

In a couple of situations where people have lived closed by to me, if they had leveled with me up front, I would have been happy to run the item over to their place. Instead, I get these progressively sadder and more dramatic tales of woe as someone begs me not to give the item to someone else. And this is AFTER they have my home address and, in one case, announce they are going to come over and “mess me up” when I finally lost patience and let someone else have an item. (On the up-side, I figure if someone can’t get their ass over to my house to pick up a Target 3-drawer organizer, odds are good they aren’t going to muster the energy and resources just to harass me in person.)

4. People who show up, pick up the item, and then either ask for money or try to sell you something while they’re there. Call me strange, but I think that odds are good that if I’m giving multiple things away I probably don’t want to buy your watch.

This one just plain creeps me out and is one of the major reasons I now insist on leaving all items out on my porch rather than letting someone come inside to pick it up.

5. People who show up and pick up their item along with several others left out for other Freecycle members, which are CLEARLY LABELED as such. Or, better still, help themselves to things like the plant and watering can you had on your front stoop. I mean, come on, one nifty free thing that’s yours for the taking isn’t enough? You have to loot everything else that isn’t nailed down, too? Thanks to Freecycle, I’ve gotten rid of more items than I ever intended.

6. People who pick up the item only to list it for sale on Craigslist the following day. Ok, this one bugs me less than the others. At least someone is being enterprising and my item doesn’t end up in the trash.

In small part, I admire them having the energy to try to sell something I wasn’t willing to get off my butt to do myself. But, this still somehow rubs me the wrong way. For starters, it’s expressly against the guidelines of the local Freecycle group. Plus, it just feels to me like someone operating in bad faith. When I give an item away, I’m picturing it as being given to someone who could really use it, not someone who’s trying to make a buck off me.

Plus, if you’re motivated enough to travel all over town collecting people’s used toasters and old mattress sets to have something to sell, why not consider getting a regular job? Especially with the cost of gas these days. It’s gotta be an easier way to turn a buck…

Anyway, that’s the short of my current complaints. I’ve haven’t completely thrown in the towel on Freecycle. I’m too stubborn for that. I am, sadly, though, a little more jaded about the whole process.

So, those of you out there who see some of yourself in the description above, kindly knock it off, okay? Before you wreck a good thing.

“Do not keep anything in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
–William Morris

A few months back while I was still soul-searching on where I wanted to go with my life, I became very clear on one point–I currently own too damn much stuff. (And that was before I decided to move into a much smaller place than where I am currently.)

I’ve always been a homebody, but I don’t like clutter. However, between the 60+ hour work weeks and even less sane relationships I’ve had in the last five years, I really haven’t been keeping tabs on all the stuff I’ve been acquiring. Moreover, recently, I seem to have been accumulating art supplies and fencing gear at an exponential rate.

When I moved from Phoenix to Tucson, I was so wiped out from my job that I just paid movers to throw everything in boxes and move it south for me. They took me literally at “everything”. When I unpacked on the other end, I discovered things like my paper bag of recyclables and the toilet paper roll with four sheets left. At that point, I weeded through my possessions only to the extent of stashing them wherever I could in our very large house. We had enough space that it was easy to ignore the fact that we had a lot of unnecessary stuff.

And then when I separated from David it was pretty much a “grab and run” operation so I didn’t streamline anything, there, either. A year later, I still haven’t recovered from the chaos of my move. My house is cluttered and my studio out back is a disaster area. In fact, I’ve been in happy denial about there being another building out back for a couple of blissful months, now.

For whatever reason, about three months ago, my inner Virgo finally woke up from her long, enchanted slumber and she’s not at all amused by the collection of detritus she discovered surrounding her. Her castle is shambles and someone has clearly not being paying the gardener.

So I find myself now at war with stuff. Well, “war” may be too strong of a description. It’s more like I’ve been having an “it’s-not-you-it’s-me” style of break-up with a lot of my possessions.

Starting a few months back, books like Walden started coming down off my shelves after years of being ignored and I found myself daydreaming about running away to some sort of Japanese-minimalist house with 500 square feet and 10 total objects inside. You know, the kind of place where an immaculate white futon can serve as your couch, your bed, and it cooks frozen dinners in under 2 minutes. The kind of place so streamlined and economically brilliant in its design that it makes IKEA execs lose sleep at night. That kind of thing. (In retrospect, I guess my little floating home is not too far off from that.)

Where the daydreamed morphed into is action was that I slowly started working room-by-room through my house and tried to keep only the things that: 1) I have used in the last year or 2) which give me pleasure to currently possess. Not what used to give me pleasure at some other point in my life. But what does right here and now. That’s proven to be a tough one to get honest about.

Those guidelines eliminate an awful lot of stuff, including, but certainly not limited to: gifts I really don’t like but feel guilty getting rid of because…well…they were gifts; those jeans I’d look great in if only I could lose those last 5 pounds; a surprising number of Hallmark cards from ex-boyfriends and roommates; supplies for those arts projects I’m REALLY going to get around to trying at some point.

To-date, it been a pretty slow process wading through stuff, made even slower by the fact that I’ve been trying very hard not to simply contribute a bunch of stuff to a landfill somewhere. I’ve been selling or Freecycling off whatever I can. Having to sort through rooms of books and CD’s isn’t making things go any quicker, either. Deciding what books I no longer need is about as easy as chopping off my own fingers. With a spoon.

With the purchase of my new place and upcoming move, it looks like I’m going to have to get more ruthless and efficient in finishing my process of decluttering. Stayed tuned…