4 Months Later

After living with A for over 4 months, I'm happy to report that I'm almost done unpacking! I took the morning off work to do this and feel very rewarded for my efforts.

Because I love preparing food and am used to my own tools, there were several boxes with kitchen items in them that were 1/2 unpacked, even open in the garage. I managed to unpack all of those, so now everything I need should be at my fingertips. I am missing at least one favorite item, but I'm hoping it will turn up where I least expect it! There are still two bins with kitchen items, but they are rarely used baking items, extra glasses and summer appliances. Oh yes, I have seasonal appliances - snow cone maker and ice cream maker - don't laugh or I won't share!

Another 1/2 unpacked box that had become a catch all in the garage contained the afghan my mom made me, my pageant gown, my pillow (A already had 2 memory foam pillows), a couple of bags and some bathroom supplies - pretty misc and probably why I never unpacked it - it was nice to get those things in and out of the elements.

I have a bunch of bins left to haul upstairs and plan to do that tonight. Mostly crafting and sewing supplies, CD cases and misc. I've been pretty brutal with my personal clutter clearing all week, so I'm hoping to apply that here as well and donate a bunch of that stuff. After that, it's just putting things back in the bins that will be stored in the attic and donating all the stuff I don't want to keep. Easy, right? I hope so! After all, I've lived without most of this stuff for 4 months!

I did go ahead and make a run to Goodwill today and donated several items of clothing, a dog bag, a craft bag, a backpack, shoes, towels, a framed print that I inherited years ago and was showing it's age, 10+ steak knives (vegetarians need good kitchen knives, but not really steak knives!) and some other misc. This is in addition to all the magazines and paper I recycled this week after clipping through them at the Word Share.

I'm feeling pretty clean now - perhaps not as clean and unburdened as my friend who just had a colonic hydrotherapy session, but clean. And motivated. And decisive. And I can thank the folks at Google Labs for a lot of this, because I found the Google task list yesterday and that seems to have helped me screw my head on straight again.

So, now it's back to work until 6 when I get to work on planning community guitar lessons!

Shuffling

I'm packing for my move and find myself shuffling my stuff about. Shuffling, shifting, moving from here to there, sorting, filing, recategorizing, organizing. There's so much I can do with my stuff. I sold the couch, it's gone, so there's more room in the livingroom to lay everything out, although time is short, especially now that we've scheduled more remodeling on the other house, my new house, my new home...he wants me to call it 'our house.' I've never had trouble claiming other people's belongings as 'ours' or sometimes even 'mine,' so I don't know why this is hard for me. Maybe it'll feel more like mine when I wake up there on a regular basis and go home to there after work. Maybe it'll feel more like mine when I stop worrying that he's going to be mad if I drop something on the floor or leave a mess in the kitchen.

That's one kind of stuff, but not the kind on my mind today. Today I'm noticing, while I sit at my office hours (yes, I have office hours, again, hence the blogging, again), how much electronic shuffling I'm doing. Not the electric slide, mind you, but the electronic shuffle. I started a second Google account in order to have a profile up for my other blog that shows my name, after all, the other blog is about my business and to stimulate business so it doesn't make sense to stay anonymous there. So I shuffled info onto the new profile and off the old, I clicked and okay'd and entered the codes so that I have a new account, but don't ever have to go there, except for the purpose of writing for that other blog.

I also shuffled photos the other day - just creating folders and subfolders so that I can find photos more easily. All the while keeping in mind my idea about scanning in all the paper photos I have, so planning for even more photos going into all these folders.

I started creating groups in my Gmail account and assigning people's emails to the groups, so that I can email group emails, which I find so annoying and usually avoid, to specific groups. What to do with Jefe or Ree or A or E? They defy categorization - either that or they fall into multiple categories. The point is to simplify group emailing, or so I tell myself, and they deserve more than that or at least my ability to remember to send them something individually if I leave them off a group. And what about those people I don't remember, not just to send emails to, but truly have no idea who they are? What should I do with those people in the Contacts list that I cannot place? Deletion seems drastic, after all, Google says not to delete anything anymore, just archive it all and search. But wow, talk about clutter.

So I shuffle information and groups and photos and people, but it's a lot of work with little to show for it. The next couple nights I need to start physically shuffling, putting my precious belongings in boxes and start moving them to A's house, our house. And when they get there, shuffle his things to make room, mix some of his and some of mine and call it ours, call it home. For now, I'm going to shuffle my attention back to the tasks at hand and accomplish some organizing and shuffling here at the office, instead of shuffling my hours, shuffling my papers whenever anyone walks in the room.