Moving sucks. It’s hard on your body, mind and wallet. It’s stressful — so much so that people consistently report it in the top ten most stressful events of their life. There are a million moving parts, a never-ending to-do list. Cross state lines and that list gets even longer. The List haunts you the entire time you pack, inexplicably growing with every item you check off.
Packing supplies. Call movers to get quotes. Logistics: how are we getting the cars there? Shipping? Driving? The dog should drive. The baby should fly.
I moved almost every year and a half growing up, so the sound of packing tape gives me PTSD. When that sound made my eleven-month-old daughter cry, I became a believer in generational trauma.
After moving around most of my childhood, teens and well into my twenties, I made a point of giving myself some stability. Mission accomplished: in the sixteen years I spent in Los Angeles, I only moved three times — and one of those times doesn’t really count because it was across a courtyard. If you can walk a pot of soup to your new address, it’s less moving, more relocating.
Set up the utilities at the new place. The cable box needs to be returned.
It’s been nearly eight years since I’ve moved, the longest I’ve ever lived at any address in my life. In that time I’ve gone from freewheeling party girl to married woman with a husband, dog and child. I’ve also apparently become a pack rat.
It’s unsettling to dismantle your life and peek into every nook and cranny after decades of gathering stuff. Our stuff reveals so much about us — for better or worse. In my case, it appears that I have the mentality of a person who lived through the Great Depression.
I can’t forget to change the address for Bark Box. Cancel the dog food delivery.
Moving around as much as I did, I was never able to fully embrace my borderline hoarder tendencies. I don’t live in a place that has pathways through stacks of newspapers and books, but I can easily see how you end up there.
I’m staring at unopened packages of cocktail napkins someone brought over for a Super Bowl party. I’m unable to release them from my hands.
Why do I have so many cocktail napkins? I haven’t had a drink in nine years.
“Throw. Them. Away,” says my husband, who will happily fill up every dump in America.
“But what if we need them?” I plead.
“I never realized my wife was a member of the Greatest Generation until now,” he says.
Who will take all the flour from my pandemic sourdough craze? What was that all about anyway? Why were we all making bread?
My friend Whitney comes over to help me break the seal on packing my kitchen — easily the most deceptive of all the rooms.
Packing the books gave me a false sense of security. I thought I was easily 60 percent done and it’s more like 10 percent.
“This is scarcity mentality!” She yells at me as I look at the expiration date on each individual jar of my spices. “Rule number one — throw away all your spices.”
I can only part with those which are expired. Baby steps.
I’m ten days into packing the damn kitchen. The moving trucks come in four days. Instead of finishing the job, I’m making chocolate chip cookies. The to-do list constantly runs through my mind. I’m packing in my sleep.
I need new health insurance. The baby needs a new pediatrician. Change of address. Update all your credit cards. Turn off the utilities. A new vet. End any subscriptions coming to the house. We need to make sure we’re labeling every box with what’s inside.
The time spent playing Tetris in real life is starting to do my head in. And I’ve waited to tackle the graveyard of dreams — my garage. Facing the hobbies that once were or never got started is as much an emotional process as a physical one. At one time I fancied myself a surfer girl and have the longboard and wetsuit to prove it. There are the golf clubs gathering cobwebs and the tennis racket, shoes and adorable tennis outfits. Who did I think I was? A nepo baby?
There are boxes of scripts that I wrote, draft after draft. What am I holding on to these for? If anything, they are just a painful reminder that I failed at my original mission when I moved to Los Angeles — to make television shows. Somehow I ended up making a janky YouTube show in my garage instead. I should burn these scripts — but that arrogant writer in me will not let them go.
The piano needs a home. It’s worth less than it will cost to move. I’m emotionally attached because I got it as a present for myself to celebrate making it two years sober — but it’s also a reminder of how I got fleeced out of $2,000 at two years sober. I was so excited and so dumb.
Two weeks into the process of packing and we are still packing. How is this possible? How did we fit so much into this little house? No matter how often we have purged, we still have too much stuff. It’s shameful.
Should we keep this? Who cares. What’s in the box? Who cares.
This article is taken from The Spectator’s June 2023 World edition.
