Packing My Life into a 62" Suitcase

It has been a year and a few months since I have had to move. For me to be this sedentary for this long is a little, well, odd.

Previously I had moved at least once every 11 months for about 4 years. (At one point I move three times within the span of a year). During those years, I became very successful at minimizing my life and packing it into two boxes, a desk, and a bed.

When I look back, I imagine myself in old t-shirts, ripped up garden jeans, a baseball cap with a ruthless sense of extermination when it came to non-essentials. I could pack up my life in a matter of 3 or 4 hours.

But now, I've been in one place for over a year which has resulted in the creation of excess. So this weekend, when I decided to finally begin my packing process of moving to the U.K., I was more than a little out of practice.

I first started with a list (anyone who really knows me knows that my life would not function without lists on napkins, folders, old notebooks, hundreds of sticky notes, occasionally the backs of my hands, and once my friend's arm).

I organized it under the headings for three spaces: bathroom, bedroom, and common areas. After getting these headings I began listing all of my essential items like toothbrushes, shampoo, razors, family pictures, a handful (edit: couple armfuls) of books, laptop, stationary, organizers and of course my Harry Potter blankets (because I refuse to move to London and leave those behind).

Once I had the written part of the packing done, I grabbed an old laundry basket and started to fill it up with these items. Unfortunately, I very quickly realized that while I could absolutely survive on the essentials I had planned for, the non-essential mass I had accumulated in the past year would probably result in death by a thousand glares from my parents if I tried to leave and store everything I wasn't taking.

So now packing my (essential) life into a 62" suitcase that my mom found at Second Blessings for $12 is not the only job I have but I also have to get back into my old ratty t-shirt, my ripped up garden jeans, and annihilate the excess.

It's gonna take more than a few hours.......