Packing News, Part 2

We´ve been getting our trailer loaded with stuff with an eye to getting it weighed. Friday business hours went by with drizzle and rain, and we still had plenty more to do, so we found out about a place with a scale that was open on Saturday. Working to the deadline, we got the trailer loaded up, and touched up the tire inflation in pouring rain. We headed down the road with our combo, taking things carefully. A good thing, too, since the scales told us that we were a chunk overweight.

Our main target has been a set of four drawer file cabinets and their contents. This is where downsizing the household starts getting really painful and personal. Notes from past coursework? Time to go. Articles we´ve kept on file, but which could be gotten through a university library? Gone. We are toting up weights of stuff we are removing, and the progress is slow. Each box of paper we´ve taken out to recycle is about 50 pounds, and we have to get rid of a lot of those to cut down to meet our weight target.

Another issue Diane brought up adds to the stress… any item we buy in Michigan will have to be balanced by an equal weight of stuff discarded there, since we will be moving again the same way next year. This is a commitment not just to a momentary restriction in worldly possessions, but now is the leading edge of how we are going to be living for some time to come.

We have set aside a drawer of a file cabinet for things to be scanned. We can keep digital copies of things far more easily than the paper counterparts. That, though, also brings up a point, that for any item that we aren´t willing to spend the time needed to convert to digital, we will be having only a brief encounter with it.