Getting Rid Of The Boxes

 Finally buying a home after years of renting has felt very liberating.  We've had so many addresses over the years, some of which we stayed in for a long time, and some of which we stayed in for just a few weeks.  The common denominator was always that I knew we would be moving on.  I know there are people who rent for their entire lives for a variety of reasons, but I always knew that we were ultimately looking to buy someplace, once we knew where we were going to be for the long run.

"Moving on" is of course a euphemism for sorting all of your worldly possessions, filling trash bags, making multiple runs to donation centers, and, of course, packing boxes.  In my experience, way more boxes are needed than you think, and if you have to buy them, they can be expensive.  When we moved in to our last place, we kept some of the moving boxes that didn't get too beaten up.  We flattened them and hid them in closets and under the bed.  We did this primarily because we didn't know how long we would be staying there, but in the end, we stayed for four and a half years.

There are also the boxes that come with large pieces of styrofoam that are perfectly contoured to cushion whatever item was stored in it.  We kept quite a few of those, too.  After all, we wanted to protect our sewing machine and food processor in transit, didn't we?  Naturally, these boxes take up much more space than regular moving boxes, since the styrofoam can't be flattened.

Then there are the reusable sorts of boxes--the plastic storage boxes and the suitcases.  We had quite a collection of the latter, owing to our time working in Kazakhstan.  

Anyway, one liberating aspect of putting down roots is that we got rid of nearly all the boxes we had been holding onto!  The moving boxes were the first to go, and we got rid of them as we unpacked them.  Then we got rid of the boxes with styrofoam.  I felt almost arrogant throwing them out--how did I expect to pack these items for the next move?  But there may or may not be a next move; what we have very definitely right now is limited closet space.  The last ones to go were the plastic storage boxes and the suitcases.  We did a purge of possessions so that we would need fewer plastic storage boxes.  As for the suitcases. we almost always do carry-on when we travel.  We kept our carry-on suitcases, one large suitcase to share as needed, and a duffle bag that folded up into the suitcase.  All told, it's probably still more suitcases than we truly need (especially at the moment, when we're barely going anywhere at all!).

I must be in for the long haul with this home.  At this point, I couldn't pack up even if I wanted to.