Moving out and on

For all of my life, I believe that in some way or another I’ve been a horrible, evil packrat. If I can help it, I don’t do the whole “throwing away things just because they’re not useful anymore.” I don’t believe in this premise because, like all good Cub Scouts (I wasn’t in the paramilitary organization for long, the soap car derby I think was the last thing I remember about being in cub scouts, except for the horrid uniforms) I had to be prepared for everything. For instance, if the IRS came knocking at my door, I’d have a copy of my W-2 and about every gas receipt from last year to prove that I’m not full of crap. If a Jack Bauer 24-style nuclear bomb fell off of a helicopter and into my room and Jack needed a screwdriver, some duct tape and a twizzler, I could get that man something in camouflage and cherry within seconds.

Yes, this all makes me sound nuts, but I think it is a genetic disorder that both of my parents gave me. Notice that I didn’t specify a parent, because both of my parents are notoriously bad about keeping things for way too long. My dad has kept my toys through who knows how many long, unbearably evil moves. And my mom still insists on holding onto this hutch she has in the kitchen, even though it has gone from being a bright yellow to sponged blue and isn’t really all that great for storage. Don’t even get me started on placemats. That would just bring up too many painful memories.

I’ve found that the things that I hold onto, the things that shouldn’t matter much to me but yet have some form of sentimental value, comes in at the media level – CDs, DVD cases, greeting cards, notebooks from class that are three years old. You name it, if I’ve listened to it, watched it or read it, it’s probably somewhere in a box in my room. Which, apparently, it’s time to do something about.

For the past three days I’ve been battling on all fronts my room, trying to figure out what I want to keep and what I want to throw away. I’ve been doing this with clothing too, deciding that my wardrobe needs to be thinned out of the things that aren’t really all that “cool” to wear anymore. I’m a college graduate, it’s time for me to get out of slacker mode and into college graduate mode. So it’s been a whirlwind of washing clothes and throwing those in the dryer, and then folding and throwing the crap I don’t want into a garbage bag that I’ll take to the Salvation Army or some such crap. Apparently, this is what my life has come down to: throwing away crap so that way I can move out of my apartment with two cars. Which shouldn’t really be all that difficult since I’m not really moving furniture. Thank God, apparently, for small favors.

While going through a large Tupperware box full of what I assumed to be partial junk (there were useful things in there, like Christmas lights that could be used in time of Zombie attack to signal rescue, so long as the power was still on…) but then I came across a DVD I hadn’t seen in a long time. On the cover it said “Open Me” and it was the first DVD that Jess ever sent to me, back when we were first dating and life was a lot less complicated for the both of us. That time has come and passed, the non-complicated part, and we have since moved on from one another and gone our separate ways. I make it sound like this happened weeks ago, when I guess in reality the anger and sadness over being on a “break” was the mourning period for me when the actual break-up, Tuesday in the early, early AM (like 1) were the words that ended it. For sentimental reasons I tossed the DVD into the keep pile and moved on. For once, I don’t have time for the sadness.

When I say that I’m halfway done with packing, what I really mean is I’m halfway done with figuring out what to do with all my stuff that I want to keep. The other half, the crap I want to throw away, has officially gotten in the way of progress and before I can finish up with everything (which will be Saturday night most likely…) I have to finish getting rid of everything I don’t want to keep, which includes but isn’t limited to things in my car. Now I just cleaned out a good portion of my car, which is nice and everything, except that I didn’t do such a good job on the trunk situation. And now that my trunk is a needed commodity, it’s time that I now have to take action and throw more things away.

Honestly, I feel like I’m being wasteful, and it’s probably the genetics stepping in and reminding me that to collect things is good. Don’t fear collection, my brain says, profit from it. It’s a deadly cycle, and for some reason I bought things that weren’t really useful. For instance, the planetarium ended up being quite useless when I realized that it wasn’t even doing things right. And then there were these lamps I purchased for use with my indoor gardening projects. The lamps ended up being useless, and now I have no idea with what to do with them. Pack them? Throw them away?

I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that with me, physical objects have no real inherit value, but rather an emotional, mental and useful connection to me. If I feel that something isn’t pulling its weight in usefulness, that’s fine. I can throw it in a box and save it for later, or throw it out all together. Part of this mentality has come about because I have this mindset about consumer goods – they’re built so cheaply that they can be tossed aside and new things just like it can be purchased later, and probably cheaper than the original object. Wasteful and consuming of space, yes, but you never know when you might need something.