Existential Crises Caused by Moving

With this new job of Derek's comes a relocation package, which is doled out in the form of a points system.  There are all kinds of services available to meet your moving needs within this package, each worth a specific number of points.  Some are a better deal than others; staying in corporate housing, for instance, is worth a whole lotta points, so we've done everything we can to avoid that one.  The point value of storing your stuff in a storage facility seems slightly more reasonable, but we're still hoping not to have to rely on that- it all depends on how soon we find a house out there.

By far the biggest chunk of our points are being eaten up by moving our stuff; we're fortunate in that a company will come pack up all our goods, put them in a truck, and haul them cross-country.   It's to be expected, then, that most of our points will go toward this, but it's still been a learning experience in and of itself, because the points are allocated by weight.  Do you know what the total weight of all your crap is?  Material crap, I mean, not emotional.  That's an entirely different metric.

As it turns out, there's a system for finding out how much your stuff weighs.  Not just a system, in fact, but a person whose job it is to come to your house, follow you around as you say, "This is going, but not that, and not that, but this and this are."  She says, "Great, okay, sounds good,"-and is by the way a very friendly person- and then she wanders through your house with her phone, scrolling and poking at things on the screen, which could normally mean anything, but this is a purposeful scrolling and poking, and you soon find out that she's scrolling to "beds, queen-size," and "couches, 6-foot" and checking off all of your things in under 10 minutes.

This all seems a little odd but makes a strange sort of sense, but really all you want is for your crap not to amount to much more than 3,000 pounds, because 3,000 pounds or less and you're not paying too much in points, but after that, you're charged every 500 pounds.

So that's what we did.  We waited for her results, and kept in mind that they always over-estimate the poundage of your stuff, which is understandable- and hey, we'll eventually be reimbursed whatever points we don't use.  And we don't have that much stuff anyway!  I'm a major house purger, and we have a bunch of built-ins (including dressers) in this old house of ours, so we really don't even have that much furniture.

Well.  As it turns out we do have a lot of stuff, to the tune of 10,000 pounds, at least by the Professional Crap Estimator's calculations.

So.  That came as a bit of a shock.

Do I feel a little sick knowing we have around 10,000 pounds worth of stuff?  Yes.  I keep thinking about all the extra things pioneers tried to bring with them on the Oregon Trail that they had to abandon somewhere along the way.  Do we really need all this stuff?  Of course not!  But conversely do I want our family to sit on bamboo mats on the floor and eat our supper with our fingers?

Actually that sounds kind of fun, but only for, like, two meals, tops, and then I know I'd be too grossed out by everyone's crusty food fingers.  Related:  WHY do I have to clean the handle of the refrigerator every other day?  I feel like I am constantly telling our offspring to wash their hands, and yet somehow the door to the fridge is perpetually nasty.


At this point I'm trying to determine just what it is of ours that weighs so freaking much.  We're not bringing a mower, or a snow blower.  We do have one big saw, and our dining table is pretty good-sized.  But our couch isn't particularly big or heavy, and we have a single recliner.  We do have five beds, and as much as I read about how good it is for you to sleep on low-to-the-floor bedding, trying to sell my family on that would be a waste of precious effort that I could be spending convincing them that a 0% grass/100% flower and vegetable yard is the way to go.


I'm not completely obtuse, of course.  One look around our house and you know what weighs so much:  the books.  So many books.  I wish I could say, "Well, each member of the family will simply have to pare down on their book inventory by 20%," but first of all I am not a monster and second of all just looking at the shelves in our living room, Derek's books occupy the space of one shelf, while mine spread across seven others.

Then there are the shelves throughout the rest of the house:  all my books.  Well, mine and the kids'.  To conclude:  we have many books.  Books are heavy.  I searched for a gif, hoping to find something soothing and book-centric and instead found a bunch of Marie Kondo gifs.  I'm feeling both targeted and offended.  The end.