Moving, and the bead stash.

Our move is coming along very, very slowly. We actually started (half heartedly) a couple of weeks ago. I sat and looked at my bead stash for a couple of weeks wondering what I was going to do with it all. On the one hand I wanted it to be the last thing we packed up so that I could work on some projects and get some content up on my blog.  We all see how well that worked out for me. :p  The reality of it though was that it became a source of stress for me. Every time I looked at my shelves I felt guilty for not getting any work done. Also, the more I sat looking at my stash, trying to decide if I could squeeze a project in; the less time I actually spent packing. It seemed a decision needed to be made.

We are moving to a temporary location. The kicker is that we don’t know how long we are going to be there. I’m not sure how much space we are going to have for our own personal belongings. This created two issues for me. The first is that nothing sucks more than feeling like a permanent guest in someone else’s home. If we are going to be *living* there, I’d like to feel like it is our own personal space. Two, how in the world am I going to decide what to take with me? Once that thought was in my head I started to get stressed out about what I was going to bring.

The first thought was that I’d pick out a few projects, bring the instructions and then everything I needed to make those projects. Seemed simple enough. Then I started thinking about all the stuff I was just going to throw in to a storage unit somewhere. Like most people, I’ve been building my stash for years. I have a lot of money invested in it, especially in my silver findings and gemstone beads. The man, who was watching me try to wade through this thought process finally laid down a command decision.

“We’re just going to take it all Penelope”.

He pointed out that the craft mates take up very little shelf space and that all of the seed beads can be condensed in to one smaller container, as can the tools. The books and magazines are another problem all together though, so this is what I decided to do.

I weeded through my books and pulled out the ones that I thought I couldn’t live without . . .  even for a few months.  That was easy enough. The bigger *issue* was the three year collection of bead magazines. Initially I thought I’d go through and pull the editions that had the projects I most wanted to make. (There are a lot of those). Then I thought I’d pull out the articles I want to make. The problem with that is that once you start tearing pages out, the magazine starts to fall apart. Ultimately, I decided to go through every stinking magazine that I have, project by project. It took me two days. I condensed about six feet of magazine space in to about a foot and half. I piled them all in to a box. I will have to sort them once we finish moving. That is going to be an even bigger project.

I have to say though, as difficult as it was it was kind of liberating.

My husband and I have been pack rats for years. He’s collected computer stuff, I’ve collected various craft stuff, cookbooks and rocsk. When he moved out he took most of his computer stuff, a few pieces of furniture and left me pretty much everything else. It was very generous of him to do that. On the plus side, once he gets settled some place he can start collecting new furniture that suits his style. So it was a good move on his part. He even left some of the newer pieces of furniture that he bought for himself in the last year.

The man and I are trying to start our new life together. He doesn’t have a lot of stuff. I’d like to create our new home with things that we like together. The reality of the situation though is that we don’t really have the funds to do that right now and the furniture that we do have right now has been serviceable.  This has made for an interesting move. I’m doing almost all of the packing because, well. . . it is mostly my stuff. He is being a real trooper and is taking everything I do pack down to the garage. This move is a bit different for me though because not only am I packing, but I am also sorting through the last 13 years of my life trying to decide what is really important to me. This has pretty much become the post divorce purge and in some ways has been a bit liberating.

There are some things that have been pretty stressful for me. The furniture has probably caused the most internal conflict. It was very generous of my husband to leave almost all of it for me. But, I have to weigh the cost of the furniture against how much bigger of a truck I will need to move it, how much more the extra storage space is going to cost me, how much it will cost me to replace it and how likely it is to make it through the move intact. The answer? It will cost less to replace it and will remove a lot of stress if we let it go now. Of course, we decided this less than a week before we get the rental truck so that doesn’t allow for a lot of time to sell it, and I hate, hate, hate the idea of it ending up in a landfill.

We took apart the Ikea Expedit bookcases, printed out a sheet showing what they are, how much they cost and how to assemble them. We stapled the pages together and taped them to the longer boards and set them out next to the dumpster. Someone started hauling them off before we got all the pieces out there. My neighbor knocked on my door to ask if I had any paper plates. :p Something spoke to me, and I asked her if she wanted my entertainment center. her whole face lit up. 🙂 So, not only did she get the entertainment center she also got two dressers, under the bed storage, unopened rolls of wrapping paper, knick knacks, and several bookcases. She is absolutely over the moon about it. I don’t have to see it thrown away and I get to help someone out. It is about as close as anyone can get to a win-win situation.

Other than that, we are trucking along with the move. We had hoped to be on the road by Wed afternoon. As it stands now we will probably be heading out early Tuesday Evening. (Yay!) My husband has generously offered to drive the rental truck up for us. We’ve bought him a plane ticket back and it will give him some extra time to spend with our children. That makes me happy. We can all use a mini vacation. Once we get the truck loaded in to storage we will have a couple of days to relax and play. The husband will get to see where we will be living, and hopefully we can make a short trip out to the coast to play on the beach before he has to head back home.

We’ve had some drama with our rental truck. We got a call last week confirming that we are going to pick up the truck on Monday. We ran out of boxes though and made a trip over to the truck place to get some more. That is when we found out that there are no trucks on the lot, they were closed for the day, closed today and will be closed tomorrow (Monday) as well. So I’m not really sure how we were supposed to pick up our phantom truck. So of course we called the company. In addition to being closed on Monday (did I mention we want to be on the road Tuesday?) they had us down as returning the truck in San Jose California. We think we have it all sorted out but keep your fingers crossed for us anyway. :p

Life is interesting.

I’m tossing this up unedited. I’ve really got a lot I need to be doing.