Moving Right Along...

In the past six months I have moved my mom, my kid and now myself. Some people hate moving. I don’t. This is my 25^th move since graduating high school and I’ve gotten the process down to where art meets science.

Moving my mom was immense, huge, and one of the biggest projects I’ve taken on. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. I had Andy, my brother and his wife, my mom’s cousins, friends, and a few saints walking amongst us who pulled miracles out of thin air. We were moving someone who had lived in her home for over 30 years, and on the property since her parents bought it in the 1950s. She was also in the early stages of grief, having lost her husband of 61 years just six weeks prior. We were moving her from a 3-bedroom house with a basement, double garage, and two storage sheds that were all stuffed. Her house also contained a lot of my grandma’s and brother’s things, so in some ways it was three households’ worth of belongings. My mom is in no way a minimalist and so it was physically taxing, as we moved her over the course of a few days, filling a 27-foot van’s worth of possessions to be fit into a 1-bedroom apartment.

Dylan’s move was a bit easier, but she too moved to a smaller place, a 1 bedroom to a studio because the apartment she was in kept jacking up the rent. We did hire movers to get the big stuff, but it still required several carloads.

And me. What does this move look like? We’re moving to a place big enough that we aim to get everything that’s been in storage for the past two years into the apartment. I detest storage units and the idea of storage generally. How is it that humans have so much that we need to build blights across the land to store what we don’t even use?! I’ve used a unit while in DC and here as a temporary solution. But it has come with a price. Literally, storage units are expensive. We’ve gone from an 8x10, to an 8x5, to now having things in a 5x4 unit. It will cost $400 to move that to NYC, and I seriously told Andy we should just burn it all. Except there’s photo albums, letters, and a few sentimental things, plus a dresser that we get to use—yay!

In the meantime, we’ve literally pulled a small wagon 15-20 times (lost count) up the 15 blocks to our new place.

Andy’s putting this Vietnamese backpack to good use!

We’ve got movers coming who are dealing with the furniture and 20 large bins*, plus the rugs and pictures.

Despite ruthlessly downsizing since moving from Portland, we’ve still filled a dozen bags full of things we’ve not used/looked at/worn in two years that went straight to Goodwill.

There’s been a lot out there on social media about Recession Core. How to save money on things? When to buy items before tariffs make the prices outrageous? Using an item up before replacing it. It’s all with an idea that we must keep consuming, it’s only a matter of getting around those pesky prices. What about this: Just don’t buy things! I embraced No-Buy ‘25 before this move, but it didn’t take a lot of convincing. I’ve been writing down what I purchase that isn’t groceries, a gift, or a necessity for the house, and it’s been such frivolous items as two bottles of nail polish (I didn’t have any), a couple of sets of tarot cards, and room spray. I follow this guy on Tik Tok who is super cheap: his account is Bradley on a Budget and while I wouldn’t want to go to his extremes, he does remind his followers that there’s precious little we actually need and tons we want. After exerting the physical, financial, and emotional labor to move my shit 25 times, I don’t want to be an absolutist and unreasonable about what I acquire, but I want to be MINDFUL. Is this a need or a want? Is it something that I’m okay dumping in a few years, and if not, do I want to haul it around forever? When I give a gift to someone, I ask if it will be truly useful and delight them, is it obligatory, or worse, something I want with no consideration of their desires? ** Our retirement accounts, if we have any left, have taken a beating. Our planet is turning into a blight and it’s not because of the animals, and for the past 70 years we’ve been gorging on consumables, and it’s not sustainable.

Meanwhile, we’re in the same neighborhood with an abundance of restaurants, closer to our local library branch, and still a quick run to Central Park, where Andy’s social life revolves around the Upper West Side Run Club. We’re even next door to a swanky senior living facility, which could be in the stars for my next move. My friend Athena has joked that when I move into the retirement center, she pictures me with nothing but a roll-on bag in one hand, and a large iced tea in the other, and I’ve made that my absolute goal.

*These bins are genius. For $100 we’ve rented 20. The moving company drops them off and will pick them up a week after the move. We usually are unpacked in 24 hours, so we’ll get an early pick up. Half of those bins are filled with books. I used to love books, but now I see them in terms of their weight. Sad, right?

**My ideal gifts are experiences or anything consumable. Flowers, food, a meal, a play, or an outing. This year I asked for a massage and tarot classes, and they were both delightful. I also got a gift card for Uber, which is deeply appreciated since we don’t have a car.