Sunday, July 20, 2008

The great purge 2008, part 2

The first Ikea bag filled with purged clothing..

Last time I posted about my upcoming move I mentioned the three general rules I'm trying to abide by in order to make this move as easy and efficient as possible. They were something along the lines of....

1. Don't move anything that I can live without
2. I might need it NOW but will I need it where I'm moving to?
3. If it costs more (or equal) to transport than I could buy that item again for, is it still worth moving?

For example... I'm not even going to bother taking any basic household items like dishes, pots, pans, etc. First off, I will be moving in with my man and he already has that sort stuff. Though arguably it may not be as visually appealing as my stuff (hehe), the United States does have magical places like Target and thrift stores. So I could show up at my new residence turn up my nose at what the man has and venture off on a buying spree for quite possibly a lot less than it is worth to bring what I may already own. We could say household goods falls under #2 - they already exist where I'm going to live next, and even #3 - I can replace everything easily and cheaply if needed.

When sorting through my book collection I also found #2 applied quite well. Books are a heavy and a general pain to move. My first instinct (I love books!!) was to toss them all into boxes and ship them. With #2 and a critical eye I realized that it is quite possible that I will no longer explicitly need some of my books. While trying to learn French I amassed many books on the language. I don't plan on forgetting what I've learned and I hope to continue practicing, but with no longer needing to know French for my daily life... Do I really need a large sum of books on the subject? This also works for any books I have on France or the city of Paris itself. Directories, guides and the like, are relevant while I'm still living here but won't be particularly useful once I'm no longer living here. Places constantly change and evolve, so books containing time sensitive information may no longer be relevant the next time I could need them again.

I've also been looking critically at any design reference books that I purchased while a student. Studying something that I never really studied before, I was hungry for ANYTHING on the subject. Three years later not only did I learn many new things, I also now have my own opinions, ideas, and style. Books that I pretty much know the subject matter and have not needed since my first (or second) year might not be of use to me anymore. Also knowing a lot more about the subject matter, some books might not contain information that is relevant to my own ideas or technique.

Moving is hard, especially if you are like me and have a tendency to develop strange nostalgic attachments to inanimate objects. It is easy to say "I don't need this" but it is hard to say that then actually get rid of it!

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Going through my stuff seems like a never ending ordeal and next time I chose to ramble about it, I think I'll discuss my new and exciting "One bag" policy that I have been applying to the sorting of my clothing.

and in other news.. I'm still actively thrifting (I'm sure I'll be thrifting up until the day before I leave Paris) and will post some of my recent finds tomorrow.

2 comments:

Andrea Eames said...

Moving is so difficult - it sounds like you're doing a great job, especially since you find it hard to purge books and get really attached to inanimate objects (I completely understand, I'm the same).

When we left Zimbabwe, we had to sneak out due to the political situation, and so we shipped our stuff out really gradually. This meant, however, that I would acquire new clothes and books almost as fast as we shipped things! I think I ended up with almost as much stuff as I had gotten rid of. :P

Rox said...

I can only the imagine the chaos I'd be in if I had to ship my stuff out gradually!