Alison Blogs Here

I’ll be doing more packing today, and I’ve already done a ton of packing – and it has all involved going through forgotten or mostly forgotten possessions and throwing things away.  Getting rid of stuff seems to help with discarding psychological baggage, as well.  Some things are easy to toss, but others make you hesitate, and then you have to figure out what made you keep them in the first place.  Does it remind you of a happy time with the person who gave it to you?  Does it remind you of someone you’d rather forget?  Are you keeping it because the giver would make you feel guilty if you didn’t?  If you got it for yourself, do you use it?  Do you love it?  Are you keeping it only because, dammit, you paid good money for it?  (We seem to have a lot of that last kind.)  We’re still going to be moving a huge amount of stuff to the new place, and we’ll need to cut back even more as we unpack, because the new house is smaller – but I’m looking forward to it, actually.