Smaller... smaller...

I am tired. I am frustrated. I am stressed. So basically, I'm feeling normal for someone who's moving house. When moving I always get a sudden strong urge to box up those things I care about or worry about first. So the books were just about the first things to get packed. Then the CDs and the various heirloom breakables. I felt a kind of anxiety until I got my office and art stuff packed up. The trouble is that I've been without these things for over a week and am getting antsy about my projects.

I was itching all weekend to pack the Ham's art supplies as well. I put it off to pack some items that I don't feel as strongly about, but that we are thinking of carting over early. In particular the linens and blankets because they took up a bunch of space in very large boxes. Better to just drive them over, put them in the linen closet (yay, we'll have a linen closet!) and bring the boxes back. Most of Ham's things are getting packed at the very last minute. It creates less anxiety for her and makes sure she has plenty to keep her busy.

One thing that I've been pondering is how much smaller our space has gotten. Our house in Colorado was very large. Almost 2700 square feet. After it sold much more quickly than we expected, we went to an apartment just down the street for the summer. I don't count that square footage because it was always going to be short-term and most of our stuff was in storage the entire time. The rental house we ended up in the autumn after we sold was 2200 square feet. Our rental house here in Portland is 1700. And the town home we're moving into is 1500.

Each time we've moved we've rid ourselves of things that we didn't need. At first this was a painful process. We'd spent so long owning nearly nothing and having nearly nothing, that getting rid of the things we'd acquired felt very strange and painful. But it turned out to be a very good process and there are only a few items that I miss... but not strongly enough to repurchase. Part of this re-education came from having that stuff in storage for three months. Some items were completely forgotten and ignored. But I can't tell you the number of times I was in there with a flashlight, digging through books to find a volume that I was missing.

I've also learned in having these various house sizes that layout is much more important than size. Making every square foot count is critical to enjoying whatever amount of space you have. I'm looking forward to seeing how the layout in this town home works for us. In particular I'm looking forward to my office/den -- a work and art space on the same level as the living room. On the other hand, the kitchen and dining area are closed off from the living room, which is a configuration that I don't like as much. We'll probably spend a lot of time huddled in the tiny dining room while the kitchen's in use.

Moving to a new house is all about what you get and what you give up. We're giving up a yard, most obviously. But we're getting newer appliances and a larger bathtub. We're getting a safer and quieter neighborhood and a better school... but we're giving up proximity to my work that made commuting so easy. It's always a trade-off and I've been using that to think about what I want more of in my life and what I want less of. While we're happy and things are going well, there are areas of unbalance that we want to work on.

So stuff to gestate for the next nine months? Less (of what we don't want). More (of what we do). And above all appreciation of the wonderful concept of enough.