To put it mildly, I don’t know how people move with any regularity – then again – I’ve moved three times, that I actually remember, in probably 20 years. And they were: 1998, 2011, and 2012. And the moves in 2011 and 2012 weren’t really complete moves. I was moving to my first actual apartment and didn’t end up actually taking absolutely everything I owned. The 2012 move was me returning to my parent’s house – so again, not a super rushed move, as I knew it was happening for a while before it went down. And I managed the last half of it while driving 3 hours each way to help train a new store’s employees.

I would not do THAT again willingly.

I’ve reached a point where I realize that I need to do a whole lot of purging this move. A whole lot. Almost 80% of the things in my parent’s house that “belong” to me probably needs to be thrown out.

Some of it precedes the original move from Kentucky to Tennessee – and I honestly do not know why it has reappeared from my parent’s stash of stuff – as I fully expected a good half of it to have gotten thrown out years ago.

My mother will deny she’s a hoarder until she’s blue in the face, but she’s wrong. She is a hoarder – how else do you explain the fact that I’m being handed a tote of toys that should have been thrown out /years/ ago every time I see her now.

I know I’ve got the gene, and I’m generally losing against it. I’m slowly working on that, but it is exceedingly difficult. But, unlike the rest of my family, I’ll admit I’ve got the problem, and I also admit that I am working on it as best I can.

Some of the stuff that she’s brought me, I might save, most of it, though, probably not. I’m trying to limit everything I take with me now because I don’t want to have all the closets stuff full of totes anymore. I want to be able to use my dresser like you’re supposed to.

Part of my problem comes from the initial move that I remember – we went from a 4,000+ square foot house to less than 2,500 square feet, and we didn’t really get rid of a whole lot of stuff during the move.

In Kentucky, I’d had a 14 by 16 or so bedroom with dual closets, and a massive playroom that was comfortably twice that. Both my mother and father had offices in the house, we had a guest room and a dining room, an eat-in kitchen with a command center desk area (before those were even a thing in common house plans) and a massive living room.

In the Tennessee house, I’ve lived in for nearly 20 years, they had to share a single desk in a corner, what was my bedroom is 10 by 11 with a single closet and had to hold everything that belonged to me. Our kitchen was half the size, our dining room, foyer, living room, and office nook all shared the same area as an open layout. Don’t get me wrong, open layouts are great – when you plan for them with your furniture purchases. My mother didn’t have an open layout in the custom built home we had in Kentucky – so we had too much furniture for the open plan, though that didn’t stop my mother from stuffing several more furniture pieces in there over the years.

What does this mean concerning the things I’d owned? It means that quite a lot of it got put away in areas I couldn’t get to – and often due to the amount of furniture in my room, I couldn’t actually utilize everything like I should have been able to. Then, in about 2004, while I was on a people to people student ambassador program trip abroad, my mother gutted my room and redid it. On the one hand, I’d been wanting it done. On the other hand, I’d expected to be there. Coming home to that was one hell of a shock, and actually made me hate having anyone in my space without me there. I still have that issue now. I hate it when people are in my space, and I have very little trust for guests or visitors in my home.

Going forward, I hope to have the largest amount of “clutter” being my crafty things. Sewing, crochet, embroidery, chainmaille, calligraphy, paper arts, my bullet journal supplies, etc. I’m naturally inclined to be artsy, and it bugs me when I don’t have access to the items I need for crafting due to not having enough space to having a working craft area.

And while we’re at it, I’m rather hoping that we’ll be in this rental for a few years – that way when we move again, it can be into a custom built home, with all the amenities that we would like to have.