The Move: Part 1

Packing Up

If you've been reading Mike's blog, you already know that we have found a new apartment and are moving in next Saturday. That means that, in the meantime, we are packing. Vaguely related items are going into uniform white bankers' boxes, where they will be irretrievable until every last box is unpacked in the new place. Our tiny studio is slowly being overtaken by towers of these mislabeled boxes - they were lent to us by my boss, who just moved this summer and had been organized enough to label her boxes. We haven't bothered to scratch out her labels and try to categorize the mishmash of items in each box.

We have a growing pile of items to donate: things that have become redundant over the past seven months in our little studio or that won't have a place in our new apartment. One such thing was an old desk of Mike's, which he doesn't entirely need for his laptop and doesn't tend to use as a work surface. We have just returned from a failed attempt to donate this desk to the thrift store two blocks down the street. After a grueling 15 minutes of lugging the thing down the street, navigating the crowded terrain of Portland's absurdly narrow and unkempt sidewalks, this perfectly good desk was deemed too shabby by what is apparently the world's pickiest thrift store. So we lugged it back and placed it next to the dumpster in front of our apartment, hoping some needy soul will find it and give it a good home.

It's remarkable how much stuff we have. We didn't move out here with many things - Mike filled about 1/8 of a moving truck container (most of that space was due to the couch and bed), and I basically filled the trunk area of a minivan. But between wedding gifts and several trips to IKEA for much-needed furniture, we now need to rent a U-Haul and possibly make several trips with it. How do you fill a 300 square foot apartment with that much stuff?

Stay tuned for an update about Saturday and the move itself!