I may have no control over where I get accepted to law school at this point. But one thing I can do while I'm waiting for the ax to either fall or be lifted off of my neck is to prepare myself for the eventuality of moving. I want at least half of this stuff gone before we pack ANYTHING, and I mean it! Thankfully as I didn't buy any of it, I'm not attached to it.
I left home with exactly one trash bag worth of stuff, mostly clothes and a desktop computer. The desktop computer was quickly replaced with a much more portable laptop and I've never gone back to the burdens of monitors and permanent desk space. However, my one bag worth of stuff has now turned into a household. How? Looking back I realize it was a process of accumulation and a tendency to fill whatever space I occupy.
My first space of my own was a single dorm room. By the end of summer sessions I needed to upgrade to a super single to accommodate all of the items so generously donated by others who were sorry for me having no stuff and were only too willing to donate items from their garage/basement/attic that they were no longer using. But rather than acknowledging that I had no use for these items and politely declining, I ended up taking them. After all...I did have space for them.
The super single dorm room turned into a single bedroom apartment, which turned into a two bedroom apartment (+husbands stuff), and finally we are now in a three bedroom house. Now I can't say that I feel too much guilt for having so much stuff, after all I can only recall a few items that I actually bought myself. My bed, hubby's desk, kitchen table, an elliptical trainer, and lots of bookshelves. Everything else was kindly given to us poor college students and never subsequently upgraded. The three bedroom house we are currently living in was once my husband's Grandmother's and when she passed away we had all of her stuff and everything from our apartment days.
As hubby put it last night when I contemplated the trouble of moving said stuff to wherever law school takes us, "We've never really had to move before. It was always like, ah, 'It's only another carload.'" This is so true, we've basically been moving around different parts of the same town for the last 6 years, never actually having to go through anything.
