Packing Peanuts

Since we’ve reawakened our family’s need to blog I can tell you that writing has been the last thing on my mind. I’ve got work… lots of work to do. I plan to write quite a bit once we get to Virginia but I’ve had lots going on, piles to level, mounds of crap to sort through and favorite finds to pack away. I won’t bore you with the current list but let me just say this…Holy smokes me and my family are bloated with material goods!  And to think that Sean and I used to be good at moving! How on earth did we do this over a weekend’s time all those years before?  Did I get old?  No… we had less STUFF!

Those who know us well can verify that Sean and I took our sweet time to grow roots and settle down in one place, but when we did… we took sick delight in filling every nook and cranny of our beautiful home with stuff!  Cool stuff. Not junky stuff. Every drop of it quality and “valuable”- so much so that it just seems wrong to give or throw these things away, for example- my white trash bag filled with packing peanuts. That bag full of love has taken me a long time to grow and gather over the years. I’ve saved every handful of those crunchy squiggles out of warmly welcomed packages over the years.  I found my treasure under a bag full of old unused sweaters (because I’ve lived in a blasting HOT desert for nine years now) in the corner of my utility room. It took some soul searching but I decided let the bag of packing peanuts go.
I simply love a big bag full of potential like that. I placed a $4 sticker on the bag and tossed it into my Garage Sale pile. A true bargain! It’s comforting to know others see these things as a source of joy as well:

Well, it seems the folks at my garage sale weren’t nearly as convinced. Several ladies picked up this amazing treasure and  rifled through the bag as if there was a hidden goodie waiting to be discovered at the bottom. When they had finished pawing through the bag they would look around, confused and simply toss it back to the ground in disgust. Not a single one of them found the same value and joy I do in owning a big bag filled with recycled packing materials… really?  Sean gathered it up along with the kids old shoes, tons of books and lots of other things I found pretty cool and worth keeping before I had to decide what I would really really need in the next five years and took them to our favorite charity here in Laredo- Volunteers Serving The Need.

 It’s just that all this stuff has to go somewhere. Some of it will be given away but the rest of it will be packed up and will move with us- somewhere in the world.  All the stuff that moves with us is being stacked up in my garage- slowly.  Eventually, I will sort that stuff into three new piles- the long term storage pile, stuff that will be shipped to us eventually, and the more immediate stuff we must have when we arrive in Falls Church.


So… more to come from me in the near future but for now I’m knee deep in the hard work of deciding what to do with all of this stuff.

-L