Please pardon my intentionally sarcastic title. While I actually have learned over the years how to pack quickly and relatively lightly, it's still never what I would call easy. Packing is a series of choices, and doing it well requires a surprisingly high degree of self-awareness and anticipation. What will the weather be like? How easy will it be for me to do laundry? How many outfits can I make using the same three t-shirts? Are these old jeans that I love too worn out to survive the trip? For me, one of the hardest parts is saying goodbye to the things that don't make the cut. Packing for a short trip is easy because I know everything else will still be waiting for me when I get back. Packing to move is significantly harder because I know there's no point in putting old clothes into long term storage even if they do hold nostalgic memories. If they don't fit just right and go with the other things I'm keeping, sometimes even some old classics find themselves on the chopping block. My sister Elora is undoubtedly the best assistant I could possibly have by my side for this process. She is unsentimental and cut-throat when it comes to cleaning the closet, so she's the first person I conscripted to help me sort through everything. She's also terrifyingly honest, which I value even though it requires some serious humility on my part. First, she pulled everything out of my closet and sorted them into 3 piles: probably keepers, probably not keepers, and keep only if they can be made into multiple outfits. Then it was time for me to meticulously try each item on to see what condition they were in and if they still really did fit me. Sometimes we disagreed about what still looked good or not, but for the most part we were on the same page about what styles were or weren't flattering.
The maybe's are sitting in their own pile and will either come with me if I have the room in my suitcase or stay here with Elora to be enjoyed on the home front.
All in all, I'm now down by a few bags worth of clothes and it's actually super nice to not have such a crowded closet anymore! Options are nice, but too much clutter just made me forget what I had in the first place. I ended up wearing less than half of my available wardrobe simply because I didn't want to go through the process of closet-diving to see what I had in there. Now I know I only have a few options, but I like all of them and would be happy to throw any of them on in the morning. It's a cleaner, simpler feeling that I really enjoy. I wish I had done it a long time ago! Now I'm ready to take the plunge into a new adventure with way less baggage to trek around with me - woohoo!!
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ErikaJeremiah 29:11 Archives
March 2023
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