OPC (Other People's Crap)

The movers come bright and early to deliver our shipment from San Francisco. It's 43 packages, although they come in too fast and furious to count. We're assuming they're all there. Anthony is at work, but the girls are still home from school for the seemingly endless fall break they are on. This works out nicely since we are all very excited to get our fall clothes. It's getting brisk out there.

This shipment represents about half a year's worth of sorting and organization (much of which admittedly happened near the end). I started with general purging of obvious junk and, as time went on, I developed a 10-point system for every single item in the house.  By "every single" I am probably exaggerating, but not by much. I sorted every drawer, cabinet, shelf, room from top to bottom, and piece of furniture down to paper clips, art-work done by the girls, each book, every sock, even rubber bands and paper clips.

For each object, I asked myself, "Does this get...?"

1) packed to Boston, then onto Europe, in our luggage (summer clothes, laptop, etc.)

2) shipped to France by boat, not to arrive before we have a permanent apartment (fall/winter clothes, most books, computers, kids bikes and scooters, room decorations)

3) left in the house for the renters to use

4) left in the house in storage (we jammed a couple utility closets with other books, personal house decorations, our good dishes)

5) removed from the house to be stored with/used by friends in San Francisco (for example, the renters wanted all of the floors bare, so we removed rugs)

6) donated to Goodwill

7) given to a friend/younger child/etc.

8) sold on Craigslist

9) thrown into the trash

10) put into recycling

Once we arrived in France, I got to re-sort in order to bring small luggage with us to Croatia and store the rest in our friend's office. And I have continued to need to sort each time we moved apartments (what will we need access to in the next 2 weeks?). Finally, after about 4 months of living out of suitcases, we moved into this apartment and have been able to unpack.

But first, the owners of the apartment had not expected to rent long-term, and it came about rather suddenly while they are living in Spain, so they did not have a chance to clear everything out properly. This means that I have had to go through almost the same sorting of their stuff that I did for ours. Imagine what you've accumulated in your junk areas if you've lived in your home for 10+ years. I went through the cupboard of tupperwares and threw away all the lidless bottoms and bottomless lids; I went through every kitchen cabinet and consolidated the packages of tea, the spices, the 7 boxes of pasta in drawers, the hotel soaps and shampoos (if we live here 2 years, we won't need to buy any more); I found the various stashes of plastic bags that the owner appears to compulsively hoard.  Both the oven and the hamper were unusable because they were stuffed with bags -- a woman like my grandmothers, evidently, who never believed in baking or roasting. 

And finally, we arrive at the day of unpacking, where I spend 9 solid hours unpacking and trying to find logical homes for everything -- consolidating and sorting along the way. The girls are very excited to see our things and are, indeed, very helpful for the first 4 out of 43 boxes. In box number 5, we happen to find their toys, and their beloved American Girl dolls, and from that moment on, of course, no amount of me saying "Yippee! Look what I found!" will entice them to be Mommy's good little helpers.

I am in a race to empty and break down as many boxes as humanly possible since I know that Anthony has an exceedingly low tolerance for the mess of moving in. When he walks into a mess, his stress aura turns black enough that I can practically see it with my naked eye. I must say, it is exhausting but also rather like Christmas morning to open package after package; however, it gets to the point where I am fearful whenever I see yet another box labeled "Master Bedroom." Each time, I hope it will be more of Anthony's stuff, but no, of course, most of the time it is mine. Though I gave away half my clothes in San Francisco, I still have a lot of (Anthony would say "too many") shirts and sweaters. Technically, this is not the problem of OPC (Other People's Crap); this is the problem of MMC (More of My Crap).

To make move-in day more interesting, the bunk bed we've ordered for the girls gets delivered today. But not the mattresses, and the bed's unassembled. Those boxes are put in the entryway. Even though every room is still something of a disaster area, by the end of the day, I have broken down about half of the boxes and have at least opened most of the others.