katallison

I should, at the outset, warn y'all that for the next few months this LJ is about to become The Journal Of OMG I Am Uprooting My Life and Moving It Halfway Across The Country OMG OMG OMG. There shall be NO hard feelings toward anyone who bails out of the friendslist fearing that all this is really going to be kind of obsessional and tedious, because dudes, it so IS.

This week's hyperventilation is on the topic of My stuff. Please god let me figure out some way to move it that will not COST THE EARTH. Which is, actually, kind of funny because I don't HAVE that much stuff, certainly not compared to most normal people of my age. I went around this evening and measured, and did a bunch of computations, and I think I'm at around 400 cubic feet of stuff I will probably move, whereas your average household appears to be at least twice that.

What is aggravating about this is that I'd really like to go with one of those we-drop-it-off, you-pack-it, we-move-it, pod-type units, but they seem to average slightly under 400 cubic feet--which is to say, I might conceivably be able to jam all my crap in one, but it'd be safer to get two, except that vastly increases the cost and hassle. The pod-units appeal because I'm not going to be trying to rent an apartment out there before moving, but will rather crash for a month or so with my friends M and J, and hence need to have my stuff stored, and having it already packed into a pod would simplify this. But I think now I'm going to go with Broadway Express for the actual move (they are highly recommended on the movingscams.com website), and have them put everything into a storage unit in Seattle, and then sort things out from there in the fullness of time.

But I still want to do a really massive purge before I begin packing. Goals about which I have some clarity include:
--books: divest myself of anything that is easily obtainable through the library system and that I do not need to have on hand for frequent reference (which would mean getting rid of about 75% of the books I own).
--music: rip all CDs to my hard drive, back up the hard drive, sell the CDs.
--kitchen: give away all cooking gadgets that I don't really use oftener than a few times a year.
--clothes: if it doesn't fit, it is GONE.
--roll-top desk: this is a beautiful antique that belonged to my mother, and I would love to still have it in my life, but I really would be fearful about moving it across country, because it's very old and brittle, so I think I'm just going to give it to my brother instead.

Then there are things about which I'm more undecided:
--sofa: I kind of like my sofa, but it *is* twenty-plus years old, and *dirty*, and felted with ancient cat hair, all of which would argue for dump rather than move, but on the other hand, new sofas are damned expensive.
--exercise bike: I do like it, I do use it, but it's *heavy* and *big* and it probably doesn't make sense to move it.
--big heavy winter coat: I shouldn't ever *need* it again (YAY!!!) unless I come back to visit Minnesota in the winter--like, say, at Christmas? It's really bulky, but I guess I could use it to pad breakables or whatever.

And, um -- HOLY CRAP OMG I'm moving!!! As I have wanted to do for the past FOUR YEARS! (*flail flail flail*)