Moving is a pain in the ass. Moving yourself overseas is even more so.
Since school ended in May, I’ve have been trying to condense our belongings into a somewhat more manageable size, since our son’s spare bedroom will be our storage locker for the next year. That means being ruthless in discarding or selling stuff.
It’s not easy, lemme tell ya.
In my younger days, it would have been a lot easier. The hardest things to leave behind would have been my LPs. As you get older, you tend to acquire possessions like barnacles on a boat, and sorting through those is difficult. If you have kids, you want to keep their childhood stuff – photos, awards, newspaper clippings, drawings. If you’re the oldest child (or an only child, as I am), with deceased parents, you also have all their stuff to deal with.
It’s not been hard to let go of our furniture, save for two or three “nice” items, most of it is disposable. The nice items are going to our two older sons’ places. The rest are either being sold or handed off to the local Goodwill a few miles down the road.
After decades of being a book hoarder, I finally lost the yen to keep every single book I have touched year ago. Books are heavy and bulky. They’re a pain to pack and unpack. They’re like a boat anchor, tethering you to one place. Still, I have two or three boxes of books I cannot bear to part with, including some I plan to take with me to China.
