Moving Mania!

I arrived back in Indianapolis yesterday to join Partner in the moving odyssey. When we met in the airport he said, "The long national nightmare is over!" - meaning that I was finally home to join him in the work of packing up the house. Well, we are in this together. It won't be a great week, but I know it will be a productive one.

This morning we had a little trouble getting going, but soon we hit our stride. We spent most of the day going through our study - including sorting through lots and lots of files. Besides separating for shredding anything that needed such, we had a great time looking at artifacts from our past. I am proud to say that most everything was thrown away - we are trying to whittle down the "stuff" that we have been carrying from state to state.

Two highlights for me:

First, a few years back my oldest brother had mailed to me several boxes of stuff that had been stored at the family farm. I (of course) had carefully placed it in a closet and forgot it. Yesterday I went through the boxes to find many, many memories, including scraps of my life in Denmark, jr. high and high school report cards, precious photos, and wonderful cards and letters from people in my past. Almost all of it I looked at lovingly, then threw out - but never fear, I saved a small pile of fond remembrances. Many, many thanks to Brother #1 for caring enough to get this stuff to me.

Second, we rounded up all the loose change in the house and took it to the "coinstar" machine at the grocery store. When it was all counted, we had about $220 worth that were turned into an Amazon.com certificate. (By choosing a "gift card" we avoided giving the coinstar people 8% of the return.) It was pretty amazing to discover that much money had just been sitting around.

Tomorrow will be more of the same - I am hoping that we will begin getting things into boxes. Wish us luck...