Over the last 46 years of my life I have had many opportunities to perfect the fine art of packing and unpacking (24 moves for me by my last count). But with every passing year, and with every move, it still often feels like a daunting task to figure out what goes, what stays, and what we just need to get rid of. Recently we had a garage sale and one of our neighbors who went to our garage sale when we sold our house last year asked Ken to let him know when the next sale would be. I told him that this hopefully would be the LAST as we had finally begun the process of packing to go overseas. He gave Ken a knowing smile and said, "Well, just let me know if there is anything you decide not to take."
Although I was never a boy scout, I was a brownie for one year (not even sure if they still have those for little girl scout wannabes), and have always had the "be prepared for everything" motto running through my brain. So yes, I packed pretty much all of my kitchen stuff because a woman has got to cook no matter what country she lives in, right? Apparently I am not the only one in the family with that same motto firmly carved into their cerebral cortex, as I saw Ken had packed a pair of chainsaw chaps to wear if the need ever arises. We don't even own a chainsaw!
About 2 weeks into the packing (usually done after work in the evenings or on the weekend) I felt the overwhelming desire to just crawl up into one of the empty boxes and take a nap. The task seemed insurmountable as I wrote page after page of box item lists. I never really thought of myself as a hoarder, but I began to see that in 5 years that is exactly what it felt like we had become. And then a friend at work was talking to me about someone they knew giving up their lucrative career to stay home and be an at home mom. She said she felt bad for them because it meant they had a lower standard of living and that they would not be able to provide as much for their kids.
I thought about that....do we own all this stuff, or does the stuff own us? I mean, it's really true that you can't take it with you, and the more you have, the more you seem to want. I have seen it played out over and over in our lives. When I think back to the happiest times in my life it has always been when I had less stuff and more time. I remember being a newlywed not having enough furniture for our first home, but it really didn't seem to matter because we were newlyweds and that made sitting on the floor seem more spontaneous and romantic. I recall having weekly game nights when we lived in a 900 square foot sparsely furnished cinderblock home in Costa Rica with only one bathroom between the 5 of us. It didn't really feel small when we left, and I still have wonderful memories of the extra time we spent together as a family while we lived there. Never once did I think of our family as lacking for anything...except for perhaps another bathroom. ;-)
And so as we reevaluated what we would take, and what we really didn't need, and with some reflection it became much easier to make those lists. Last time we moved overseas we shipped 750 cubic feet of "stuff" with us. This time Ken, Connor and I fit everything in a small trailer that Ken hitched up to his truck to take to Mobile tonight then on to New Orleans tomorrow to be put on a container ship bound for Honduras the end of this month. And although we pray it all makes it there safely, even if it doesn't, it's all just stuff!
