Thistledog's Farm

The last winter storm of the season blew rain through San Diego County today, making for a very wet, very windy St. Patrick’s Day.  I’ll have to don green and raise a Guinness with friends at the local pub another year, as I’ve only 4 days left to finish packing before the moving truck is here to be loaded, and still have a ways to go.  The end of this labor is very near.

So it’s St. Packing Day for me, and I’ll wait to celebrate until the last box is nestled inside the big trailer and the doors are closed and locked, ready for the storage yard.  A 28-foot trailer will be delivered out at the curb on Wednesday and picked up the following Monday, giving us five days to cram all the belongings I’ve collected over the years into what I hope will be enough space.  Never having moved by commercial truck before, and being an official stuff-monger, I’m a little worried that it won’t all fit.  I guess we’ll see.

Anything that doesn’t fit will have to go with me in the little U-haul trailer I plan to pull behind my Toyota pickup when I finally drive out to the Farm.  That will hold things like my tools and home office stuff, hazmat items that can’t be shipped commercially, things I’ll need right away, things I’ll need here at the house to finish up the landscaping projects – these things will go directly with me to Kentucky.  There should be room for odds and ends.

I started packing bit-by-bit over a year ago in anticipation of this move.  Needing to make room in the hallways to paint and replace baseboards, I rented a little storage space last Spring and started moving books and boxes into it a few at a time.  I boxed up half my fabric stash to make room in a spare bedroom closet for Bear’s model train stuff, and then stored all my hanging clothes to make room in my closet for dresser drawer modules, enabling the rearrangement of the master bedroom into a Bear Cave.

Since the 2nd of March I have been packing full-time; emptying cabinets, dragging boxes out of attics, wrapping things and fitting them into the right size boxes, over and over again.  My thumb tips are cracked and sore from handling all the paper and cardboard, and the dogs spook at the ripping noise the tape rolls make as boxes are assembled and taped up.  The flurry of activity has them on edge.  We’re deep into it, I tell them.  This is how we get to the Farm.

Some days I rue the packrat in me.  Conventional wisdom advocates thinning out stored belongings before a move, donating or throwing away items that can be purchased at your new location.  Well, I don’t want to have to buy a lot of stuff, ever again.  So I grit my teeth and lovingly, carefully, wrap each cider bottle and canning jar in bubble wrap and then a sheet of newspaper, nestle all sorts of useful objects together in boxes and label them for the future, knowing they’ll stay stacked on tall shelves out in the shop building until a need for them arises.

It’s a fine line between having too much stuff, and skillfully conserving resources on hand.  I supposed it is good to have to move it all every twenty years or so, just to force yourself to take an inventory and dispose of what no longer has any value.  I have donated a dozen boxes  of clothing and miscellany to Goodwill, given away California gardening books, and thrown out some things that just disintegrated with age.  But most of what I am packing (and will have to unpack on the other end) is useful, and cherished, and will save me from expending limited funds at some point, so I consider it worth the effort.

Bear will have more than a bed and a TV left, in case you’re wondering.  Mostly I am taking the excess, the dust catchers, and leaving a clean, streamlined, efficient and liveable space.  Just right, in my opinion, for a busy bachelor not much good at keeping things tidy.  And all sorts of room to stack his own collected stuff, which will be another bridge to cross when it’s time for him to join me in Kentucky.

But for now, I pack, and pack, and pack.