Moving sucks. If our living environment impacts our mental health, and most experty experts agree that it does, then moving is signing up for a serious downgrade on mental security.
First, you go through the filthy job of packing and cleaning the old place, then you are left up to your eye teeth in boxes. Boxes of pre-curated clutter and junk with enough sentimental value that if you can see it you want to keep it.
We are up to it in boxes of clutter right now. We have unpacked enough that we are able to live quite comfortably, but there are stacks of untouched boxes in the corners and about a fifth of the main living space is crammed with them. We have been officially in the new place for 7 weeks. My mood is swinging all around, and I’m struggling to stay vertical all day. It isn’t pretty and we are all suffering for it.
I’m sorely tempted to throw away any/everything still in boxes, then I remember that it includes my photos flash drive and I start wonder what other important things I’m forgetting about, so I have to go through all of it. Sadly, for every awesome find like my flash drive I know there will be a dozen or more little objects that I neither want nor need that I will have to deal with. Broken pencils, sentimental knick knacks, things that I received as gifts that no longer make any sense but still carry a burden of obligation.
How will I cope? What do you recommend? Well, it is obvious as I write this that I need to get the unpacking and secondary purging f-f-f-finished. This is less obvious when the kids are demanding entertainment and the laundry needs doing, and homeschool, and dinner, and and and.
Maybe working on one box, not necessarily emptying it, should become part of my after-Rosebud’s-sleeping routine. In our old home I got up nightly to exercise and work in my journal. Maybe reinstituting that will help me feel less like I’m drowning in unfulfilled potential and suicidal resentment.