Moving on out

This past weekend, I spent my time upside down in boxes. It's really depressing how few things I've managed to scrape together over almost 28 years of living. I always thought I had so many things.

Some context perhaps.

I got my last things from my parents' house on Friday. On Saturday I started to Sort All The Things (thank you, HyperboleAndAHalf), and Boy isolated himself in the attic and in the basement. All in all, we had a very productive day, which ended in six boxes donated to charity, four huge bags of trash thrown out, and three runs to the junk yard with broken stuff, electronics, broken furniture, and old mattresses.

During the course of the sorting, I came to realize that I have less stuff than I thought/feared I have. Boy and I don't have that much stuff, really. With a combined age of 56 years, you'd think that we'd had managed to gather more things, but really, it's almost depressing. And in a way, it feels really nice. When we/I are/am finished with the sorting and evicting of things, the total of our worldly possessions should be no more than 12 boxes, of which five or six will be books in various forms (you can never have too many books).

Growing up and living in pre-AdultApartmentLife apartment, I always felt that I had collected too many things. Too much stuff was clogging up my life and I felt bogged down. Last night, however, I felt light and free for the first time since moving out from my parents' house. My apartment still looks like something exploded in my closets, but most of the stuff is either sorted laundry or things that will get thrown out the next time I have access to a car.

There is something very cathartic about getting rid of old things, be it to charity or the junkyard.