Countdown: 2 Days

Packing progress is laughable. It’s been a busy couple of weekends, so we haven’t gotten much of anything done in terms of preparing to move.  (In terms of now being halfway finished with wedding thank-yous and finally sending our photo selections to the wedding photographer for our abum, we are golden).  But seriously,  how do you pack up your life?  Let me re-frame the question: How do you pack up your life when you only have a few hours at night to handle the task so that you do not drown in the sea of crap that you own?   (Which has already happened, a la Hoarders)

The kitties are adrift on island-like boxes of books and towels and blankets that weren’t clutter until I kidnapped them from their homes on shelves or in linen closets.  And you can’t just throw this stuff away without making yourself cold or wet or … you know… without books.  Inevitably we've ended up with this unpleasant half-assed warehouse look to our living space and grump-inducing life-detritus clogging up our surroundings.  Now there’s even more crap strewn everywhere and I can’t find anything.

So I had to start somewhere so I just picked a box up and started filling it.  No methodology really, only I'm trying to keep the boxes organized.  The Office Supplies Box.  The Post-Apocalyptic Book Shelf Box.  The Japanese Grammar and Vocabulary Textbook Box.  The Christmas Tub.  The Out of Season Wardrobe Tub.  Perhaps if I hadn't procrastinated there might have been some clever method I would employ. Something tidier.  Perhaps the greater problem is that our apartment has recently become a narrow chasm into which wedding gifts have fallen (in orderly piles, mind you).  We want to put them away, only we lack a space in which to put them.  Decorative gift bags and appliance boxes have taken over the floor of our office, and the cats' normal play behavior has given way to the type of guerilla tactics that  involve making the best use of obstacles that make the gratifying THWAP noises when batted against.  Muffled thwap-noises are the only way to find the cats anymore, as the sea of crap has closed over their furry heads.  Trying to pack involves a bizarre hopping-and-leaping dance over the bags and boxes that are already there NOW to retrieve  items off of the orderly shelves so that I can create more bags and boxes.  …  cringe.

Last night I began to segregate the tools/first aid/TP/paper towels/cleaning supplies we will require in our first days at the house.  Now I'm calling around for last minute Q&A with lenders and processors, trying to contact the city for our recycling bins, created an account with the City Water Works (tried not to be unduly gleeful when she asked if this was my first account with the water works).  Lots of tasks to be done before the day.  I hope I've thought of them all.