More Purging

I am in the process of moving to Florida, and for the first time, I cannot take everything I have collected up to this day. Those that have known me for a long time know that I tend to hang on to a lot of stuff and as years go by my collections have grown. I remember when I was able to move across the country with all of my possessions fitting in my car. Now that is hard for me to even imagine….


Now I am purging so much of it because I am faced with a move that is more costly than I want or can afford to spend if I move all of this stuff. I started to purge back in October when I was selling my house, but I was more focused on just throwing everything in boxes so that I could paint the walls and get the place sold (whew! that was a crazy month). I had a garage sale and gave so much stuff away…most of it was the many pieces of thrift store and side-of-the-road furniture I have collected and old toys of my kids.


Now, for the past few weeks, I have been consumed with an overwhelming urge to purge. I can save a decent amount of money if I can fit all of my stuff into a smaller space for moving. Since I just bought a house in Florida and am moving across country, I need to reduce expenses wherever possible. So I started clearing out stuff that I no longer needed. In the process, I have touched just about everything I own. I have opened every box. I have sorted and reboxed. I am organizing everything. Similar things are all together in the same box and each is labeled. I have accumulated many many empty boxes on the patio in the process. Things I no longer need are thrown away or given to GoodWill or whatever. There have been tears from time to time as I go through each time capsule that I find. So many boxes of memories that would not be considered memories to anyone else…it is all just stuff…but to me, it signifies that moment in time…and touching it all over the past few weeks has kind of seemed like seeing my life flash before my eyes so to speak.

Sometimes I am surprised by the things I have saved over the years. So very many things have had sentimental value to me…I have always seemed to be afraid that I will not remember every single little detail of my life…always thinking that I need to keep all of these symbols and icons of every moment. And now I have been on a crazy spree for the past few weeks getting rid of so many pieces of junk that I just do not need to keep.


I love this urge to purge that I have become consumed with lately..it is refreshing and relieving to watch myself get organized and make choices about what to keep and to have time to be organized about it while I count the days to when my boys get out of school for the summer and we hit the road to Florida. But that is still 32 days away and it is so nice to be really getting organized and efficiently packed. And I will tell you something else…I am a pro at packing and moving my stuff now that I have done it so many times in the last 7 months.


I feel pretty good about where my life is heading…I have almost forgotten why I ended up in the desert in the first place…