Moving Is For the Young

I'm not moving until the end of this month but have been stressed about the whole impending process since Christmas vacation. Though I currently live in only a 380-sq-ft apartment, I've lived in it for the past 4-1/2 years and have built up a TON of stuff...

I arrived at this place in 2010 with the following cast-offs from my mom: a good 3 x 3 wooden kitchen table and two chairs, a computer table on wheels, a 3-drawer supply table on wheels, a night-side table, a foam chair that folded out into my bed for a couple of weeks, a 1990 microwave oven. Plus maybe 4 boxes of personal papers, 4 boxes of books, a few boxes of dishes and random personal items. And a 1990s TV that I bought from craigslist for $20. My mom and I moved all of this ourselves in one morning, except for the kitchen table, which my brother did for us.

Since then, here's what I've accumulated:

• bed/box-springs/metal frame (ordered new online, delivered)
• three 6-ft bookcases (2 from a used furniture store that my brother delivered, 1 found by my apt. dumpster)
• a 5-ft bookcase (craigslist person who delivered)
• small bookcase (used furniture store, brother delivered)
• nice Crate-and-Barrel chair (used furniture store, brother delivered)
• small round wooden table with eaves (alley behind my apt. building)
• light chair (by my apt. dumpster)
• etagere (from an apt. neighbor selling off her stuff)
• wooden DVD case (craigslist person who delivered)
• 500-CD holder (by my apt. dumpster)
• over 500 books
• over 400 CDs

In short, I've now got a whole lot of crap to move. It's not so much the big stuff like the bookcases/bed/chair that are bugging me -- for me and the movers I can now afford to hire, this part is quick-n-easy. It's the gazillion books and CDs that all need packing up! I just spent 2 hours tonight starting to pack up some books/DVDs/gew-gaws... I got exactly 4 boxes done in 2 hours! Given the fact that I know I'll be packing about 40-50 boxes by the end of it all, this makes me a bit tense and nervous. One, because I now know exactly what a HUGE amount of work I still have to do. Two, because as I start to pack up everything, my place is so small that I have nowhere to put the stuff except right there in the middle of my apartment; so, with 4 weeks left to go, I'm already surrounded by a bunch of boxes and messiness.

While packing this evening, I flashed back to the days of college and the decade after, when I used to move practically every year, with just a carload of friends and a pickup to help! Moving and helping people move was kind of a constant up until I was about 35! And there was still a bit of excitement about the whole process: "What will my 'next' place/life be like??" Now, approaching 50, though, and having been there many times before, said "process" is already, in its early stages, quite tedious and a bit depressing, despite the accompanying anticipation of a much larger place in a neighborhood I'm looking forward to being in. I was hoping the "anticipation" would have been a lot greater than it currently is.