Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Merging

It's official, Tim has given notice at his apartment. We have until August 31st to move him into my place.

Originally, he had considered moving in in July, but we put that off because of a Yosemite camping trip that had been scheduled back in February and could not be changed. The extra time sounded like a good thing at the time, but frankly the time has flown by and neither of us took much advantage of the extra month.

Quite to my dismay, I'm the one who is behind. You see, since he's moving into my place, I'm the one holding things up. It's very true that empty spaces tend to fill up if given the chance - it's called entropy. In the four years I've been here, I've managed to go from supplies to fill one bedroom and kitchen to completely filling (and overfilling) a kitchen, hallway closet, dining room, living, and two bedrooms (including two walk-in closets). Thankfully, the early roach incidents kept me from storing things in the one-car garage.

Now, I have two week to PURGE. I have a box on the floor of the kitchen and two boxes strewn about my bedroom waiting to be fed with treasures that I must abandon. My attitude towards the move has taken some adjustment. Tim patiently has been pointing out that I've been only willing to make minimal space for him rather than giving him half the space. It's really hard, I've been the only one here for four years. It's taken me many weeks to see that I've taken the wrong approach towards welcoming Tim into "our" home.

I totally understand how this can be awkward for him. After all, everything has been put where *I* think it should go, not where *we* decided. I lose perspective at times because I'm struggling to let go of things that I've been used to having around. At times, the though has crossed my mind to simply throw everything out and start over just to make it quicker and less painful. Since I'm such a bargain hunting shopper type, however, it isn't in my nature to give away my stuff for nothing and pay full prices for new stuff. (Besides that would be a waste of resources and an example of bad consumerism... .)

My strategy thus far has been this:

- eliminate clothing that I have not worn in two year or know that I cannot fit into without losing 10 pounds
- remove items that will become obsolete (e.g. futon mattress to be replaced by Tim's bed, analog tv)
- remove items that will be upgraded by wedding gifts (e.g. mismatched dishes, glassware, and utensils)
- move into storage items that are unlikely to be use in the next six months (e.g. Xmas decorations, extra furniture, extended sets of kitchenware, linens, photos and CDs that have been copied into iTunes)

The garage will become a temporary staging area for incoming and outgoing boxes. My poor car will have to suffer a dull "stoning" from the neighbor's tree each evening as the wind and squirrels knock down the season's seed harvest from the branches.

I get a small reprieve tonight, however, as we'll be watching and cheering on our favorites on the "So You Think You Can Dance" finale. Woo hoo!

1 comment:

teahouse said...

Ah, moving in together. I was in the same situation as you - Husband moved into my place. So I had to purge and clean as well. I did a crappy job, and it took forever!! In the end, he moved in 2 weeks before the wedding, haww!!