coming up for air

This weekend we were able to start shifting some of our stuff into the garage at our new house. It is great that the owner has let us do this, and it will make moving weekend much more straightforward. We emptied the storage unit we hired when we got the house ready to put on the market, we got everything down from the attic, and we took all the banana boxes you saw empty in my last post, now filled. What is sitting in our new garage looks like a small house-lot. Of course, if you came to visit our house today you wouldn't even realise anything was missing.

We tromped up and down our front stairs carrying boxes and furniture all Saturday and Sunday afternoon. After doing this for the umpteenth time I realised I actually like moving house. When it was just me and my sister and Mum we shifted a lot, sometimes as often as every year. Packing the house up to move became a familiar routine, and looking at new flats was exciting. Even after Mum re-married and we settled down, we still ended up shifting house every few years. I remember one moving day when I was at University but still living at home, I had packed my entire bedroom (minus the bed) into my little banged-up car the night before moving day. I drove to the supermarket where I was working for the day, the car jam-packed with stuff, and then drove to our new house straight after work. I got there well before the moving truck and the rest of the family. I was that keen.

It's a funny process, shifting house. Everything we own will be rendered transportable. It will be wrapped and packed away tightly, or emptied and cleared. Little things will be packed next to other little things, breakables will be wrapped and tucked into other breakables. I can't tell you how many boxes of books I shifted this weekend. Everything in order, everything contained. When I decided that order would be my word for the year, I never imagined we'd be shifting house, and I never would have thought that moving had anything to do with order.

There is plenty of shifting happening in other ways as well. Ideas are being packed and unpacked, wild dreams are being made room for. Treasures are being sorted and classified, ready to be put away, their season of use ended. Change is everywhere.

So it's busy inside my brain. I am tired. More sleep would help. But this is the best rest I can give myself. Writing is how I tidy up on the inside.