It's a waiting game, but it's almost over!
Over two weeks in the new apartment and still no belongings. There are, I am told, few households moving to Montana right now and they are unwilling to send my stuff on its own. It makes sense, I suppose, but it's getting a little frustrating. I apparently thought the moving van would appear as soon as I wanted it to, as though it was existing in an alternate universe just waiting for me to say the magic words that would whisk it from the faeire realm and materialize it in my driveway! Sadly that did not happen. But...I finally have a date! Not a firm, we-will-definitely-be-there date...more of a we-might-be-there-but-we-might-not date. Sometime between the 18th and 23rd of this very month, I will finally have a couch, a bed, my dishes. My spacious and virtually empty apartment will be spacious and empty no longer. Where blank floor space now exists, there will be boxes upon boxes of things needing places. Some things will never find places, at least not within the walls of my apartment. Through yard sales and donations, I will eliminate anything that I don't need, love or have room for. Ordinarily I would hesitate to dispose of furniture that I might someday use. But since I have made the decision to live smaller, I think it is important that the things I have fit the space they occupy. I am adding new multifunctional and/or organizational pieces...a combination wine/liquor/china sideboard, a smaller desk, counter height stools for the kitchen island, a row of hooks for hats/scarves by the front door with a rack for boots/shoes below.
Meanwhile, in Southern California, my 84 year old mum is having the opposite problem. After having lived for 12 years in a small house, she now has a spacious doublewide with tons of storage and room to sprawl. She texts me regularly (yes, people that age can text...they don't lose the ability to spell/type just because they are older!) to let me know about new furniture she has ordered and where it will go. She is delirious over the built in hutches that will give her so much room to display her tchotchkes and if I know my mom, she is planning on buying even more display cabinets. I try to imagine myself in her shoes, not downsizing but upsizing and find the idea does not appeal. More space=more space to fill with stuff that will need dusting. So I am wondering, at what point do you stop admiring the collectibles you have accumulated over the years and instead become a curator of them? Am I becoming a Minimalist? I don't think so, but I am keenly aware that eventually someone will have to sort thru my belongings, deciding what can be thrown out, what needs to be kept. I would rather that person be me than passing the responsibility on to strangers or worse, my children.
So here I sit at my new desk in my otherwise fairly empty apartment, waiting on a truck to bring me more stuff than I can possibly find room for. I figure when the boxes start unloading I will either calmly direct the gentlemen as to where they can place said boxes or run screaming for the hills. If I pass you in my mad dash toward Mount Sentinel, spare me a kind thought. After all, there but for the grace of God go you, my friend.
Meanwhile, in Southern California, my 84 year old mum is having the opposite problem. After having lived for 12 years in a small house, she now has a spacious doublewide with tons of storage and room to sprawl. She texts me regularly (yes, people that age can text...they don't lose the ability to spell/type just because they are older!) to let me know about new furniture she has ordered and where it will go. She is delirious over the built in hutches that will give her so much room to display her tchotchkes and if I know my mom, she is planning on buying even more display cabinets. I try to imagine myself in her shoes, not downsizing but upsizing and find the idea does not appeal. More space=more space to fill with stuff that will need dusting. So I am wondering, at what point do you stop admiring the collectibles you have accumulated over the years and instead become a curator of them? Am I becoming a Minimalist? I don't think so, but I am keenly aware that eventually someone will have to sort thru my belongings, deciding what can be thrown out, what needs to be kept. I would rather that person be me than passing the responsibility on to strangers or worse, my children.
So here I sit at my new desk in my otherwise fairly empty apartment, waiting on a truck to bring me more stuff than I can possibly find room for. I figure when the boxes start unloading I will either calmly direct the gentlemen as to where they can place said boxes or run screaming for the hills. If I pass you in my mad dash toward Mount Sentinel, spare me a kind thought. After all, there but for the grace of God go you, my friend.
