Too Many Too Much

Some of you may have heard the news:  At the ripe old age of 26, I am moving out of my family home.  I know, I know, I didn’t think I’d move out until I was married, either.  But it’s true, it’s actually happening.  Due to a nice set of circumstances, this whole moving out thing happened pretty quickly.  I’ll be living in a 3 bedroom apartment with Jill and Erica, and I’m not telling you where because this is the internet.  Suffice it to say that my work commute will only be about 5 minutes.  (Wonder of wonders, I won’t have to drive past ANY schools on my way there!)  I’m very excited to live on my own for the first time.  I love to cook, and I’ll get used to doing laundry eventually, right?  Of course the rats will be coming with me as well!

My guys

There are a few things I’ve learned about myself, and just in general, during this whole moving out/moving in process, and part of those things are on this list.  I like to call this list…

Things I Have Too Much/Many Of:

1.  I went up to my attic on Sunday morning before Mass, ready and willing to separate all my books into keep/donate piles.  I don’t have enough room in my bedroom for all my books, so I store most of them in the attic.  I sat down in my pajamas, a well-sugared cup of pumpkin coffee steaming gently on the floor next to me.  The first carton of books was full to bursting.  It took me a good hour and a half to work through that and 3 more cartons, thanks to plenty of five minute distractions where I’d either pick up a book, exclaim with delight, and re-read my favorite part, or run downstairs to tell Mom that I had too many books, I had forgotten about this book, I couldn’t find that book, and- once- that there was a spider on a book.  In the end, I think I set 5 books total in the donate pile.  I can’t help it.  I cherish all my books and am loathe to part with any of them.  I love them all: the fat, bulky books missing their dust jackets with epic tales that sweep across countries inside their dull hard covers.  Or the paperback mysteries from the 1950s with classy heroines who manage to uncover criminals, fall in love, get into car chases, and still wear dresses and heels.  I’ve got GK Chesterton’s sly wit and sneaky brilliance stacked up with CS Lewis’ appealing apologetics; Dickinson and Hopkins and of course Bronte and Austen.  I can’t give any of them up.  So I picked up my (by then tepid) cup of coffee and walked downstairs to see if we had any bigger bookshelves. 

2.  The same Sunday brought me marginally more success when it came time to weed out my clothes.  I have a lot of clothes and I don’t mind admitting that.  My clothing size hasn’t changed since I was about 18 so the fullness of my closet could definitely, in some excuse-sounding but actually pretty honest way, be attributed to about 8 years worth of accumulation.  Simply put, I still wear skirts and blouses now that I wore at my first job at the elementary school eight years ago.  And I still have my sweaters.  Oh boy, do I have my sweaters.  That donate pile held plenty of clothes by the end of my closet emptying session, but nary a sweater could be found in it.  I love my sweaters.  Soft, long, short, brightly colored or simple- essential- black, they spilled out of my closet, a veritable rainbow of toasty warm, wool/polyester delight.  I hugged them all to my chest and promised to transport them without losing a single button.

3.  Shoes.  I have too many.  Way too many.