Cornered: My Life in Boxes

I'm starting to feel a bit suffocated. I may not have mentioned this here before, but...we're moving. Not far, just under three miles away. Nonetheless, everything still has to be packed, ready and accounted for. We have been pecking away at the packing a piece at a time. A box here, a box there, as we decide which of our precious things we can live without for a month, for 3 weeks or, now, for 12 days. My husband jumped the gun on our bedroom lamps. He packed them up on Wednesday morning before heading out on a business trip. (Side note: today is our anniversary and he is spending it in our honeymoon location-San Diego. I, on the other hand, am spending it here, surrounded by boxes and hungry children. But, back to the matter at hand.) So off he went, and as I got into bed that night I realized that, if anything startled me in the middle of the night or if I just had insomnia, I would not be able to reach over and switch on the lamp. So I have borrowed a decorative nightlight from the baby's room for the next 11 days.

It's fascinating to me to see our daily life gradually being reduced to brown cubes with Sharpie writing on them. As you might guess, I am starting to wonder why we have all this stuff. And why on earth are we going to the trouble of playing Tetris with it to get it neatly and safely packed into boxes, just to take it to our next home and not know where to put it? In case you're wondering, yes, we have had one of those moments when we discovered we had packed something we shouldn't have and had to hike Mount Cardboard to find and extract it.

Packing has been an interesting study in priorities. Books have been packed away, but the TV is still up and running and the DVD collection remains readily available. Piano music has nearly all been packed, but the CDs are still in use. Only the essential dishes have not been packed, which begs the question, "Why do we have more than the essentials?"

We have every intention of being extremely organized in our new house. A place for everything and everything in its place. Of course, once we get settled, we will realize how much more space we have and we will start to buy things and fill the empty space until we are once again...cornered. The circle of life. (Or at least one of them.)