piecing things together

artwork by sabin + awesome washi tape

we've spent the past five days of the easter holiday packing and packing and packing some more. and only last evening did it finally start to look and feel like we'd made some headway. 2/3 of the books are packed, all of the pretty paper and most of the fabric. i have sorted a zillion things that were hanging out in the attic and husband made countless trips to the dump and the donation containers yesterday. why were we keeping all that crap i asked myself again and again yesterday. and as the day wore on, i became more and more ruthless about getting rid of things, which was undoubtedly healthy.

once the things were taken off the walls in the blue room and boxed and bagged, it felt less painful, the less it looked like itself. i still have some way to go, but husband will take the first load over to the new house on friday. and the current owners have been kind enough to let us begin to fill up what they call "the old living room" with our boxes and things. husband is taking everything that won't fit properly into boxes for the movers to handle - things like my loom and rolls of leather.

all of this packing gives us a sort of spring cleaning that we should have done ages ago and it feels good to purge a lot of stuff, especially clothes that we haven't worn in ages. i saved a bag of hopelessly out of date sweaters for felting, but i did a fairly good job of really culling our old clothes. what is it in us that causes us to hoard and save? i always joke that i was in the siege of leningrad in my last life and that's where the impulse comes from, but i think it's something deeper than that, more of a biological drive to hold onto things you might need if conditions change. because if it's that, then i can't help it, right?

aside from sorting and getting rid of things, packing gives you lots of time to think. i found myself thinking a lot about how i wanted to arrange things in the new house and daydreaming of color schemes and of what to plant in the garden.  but i also got all sorts of ideas for bloggy topics, which was reassuring, because i haven't been exactly brimming with those of late.

it's interesting how taking all of these pieces of a life apart and packing them up and imagining them in another place actually feels cathartic and like a relief of some sort. we'll surely piece them all back together in a new, but familiar, configuration, in the coming months.

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i'm going to be traveling back and forth in the coming weeks, since i start my new job on the other side of the country tomorrow and husband and sabin won't join me 'til the last week of may. it means i'll be a bit absent from all of your blogs (which you probably already noticed) and probably using lots of pictures and few words here. :-) but i won't forget you and i will be stopping by again just as soon as i can, so please be patient with me!