Moving

Getting Organized Column
BackStage, January 2007
topic: moving

A Moving Experience
By Kristine Oller

After three years, this is the last night you will spend in your studio apartment. Tomorrow, you will be the happy occupant of a one-bedroom condo. Your excitement, however, is tempered by the fact that you are surrounded by mounds of boxes, packing supplies, and possessions, and you are quickly running out of time. As usual, in a last-minute rush, you start shoving your stuff into vaguely labeled boxes, hoping you’ll have time to sort it all out when you get to the new place.

From headshots to residences, one constant in an actor’s world is change. While you may have hit town with just a suitcase and an invitation to crash on your friend’s couch, eventually you will move on–and on and on. As your natural human desire to have plenty of space competes with your natural human desire to fill all the space you have, moving your belongings usually becomes a bigger hassle each time you have to do it.

Even if you are being pushed out, moving into a different environment always represents the start of a new chapter in your life. I want to suggest an approach to the task that takes advantage of this opportunity to create organization and embrace transformation.

Indulge the Urge to Purge

Most people think of moves in two stages: packing and unpacking. However, purging your possessions is a third, equally important stage that should, if possible, be done before packing. After all, why pay–in time, energy, and money–to haul stuff around that you don’t want or need?

Purging encourages you to ponder the type of life you want to have in your new home. Ask yourself which of your belongings will help you create that life and which will not. Though I am a fan of keeping mementos that remind you of your history, avoid living in a stagnant environment that merely reflects who you once were.

The purging process has two common stumbling blocks: trash and gifts. Some folks hate the idea of throwing something in the trash, because they equate it with labeling that item as “unworthy” or “unwanted” and condemning the item to a horrible fate. How can one possibly do that to stuff that was once liked or useful or a gift? Try to consider the act of purging as the act of releasing an item back into the world to find its next home. After all, you really have no idea how your “trash” will be used or recycled in the future; the desk I am sitting at right now was once riding in a dumpster across a college campus.

What about when you love the giver but hate the gift? Even if you don’t like, want, or need an item, you might feel guilty about releasing something that was given to you. Yet I believe that, in every exchange, the “gift” you are given is not the object but the intention of the giver. One hopes the givers gave because they want you to be happy, they want you to feel and remember their love. The object is a token of that love, not the love itself. Releasing the object does not diminish the love that was given to you. If an item doesn’t lift your spirits when you see it, then keeping it goes against the intention of the giver.

Pack Attack

The more you purge, the less you’ll have to pack. The better you pack, the more easily you can unpack. My simple system is based on a traffic light. As you pack an area—kitchen, desk, bathroom—your items will fall into one of three categories: green for “love it/need it/use it all the time,” yellow for “like it/want it/use it occasionally,” and red for “on the fence about keeping.” Each box should hold items in only one color category. As you fill each box, label it on the outside with the contents’ room and category color: “bedroom/green.” The yellow and red boxes need more detailed labeling, as you will be opening these boxes gradually. You can list the contents directly on the box or assign the box a number and, on a master pad of paper, list each box’s number and contents.

Once in your new home, open all of the green boxes first, as those boxes contain everything you need for daily living. Then, as you have time, open the yellow boxes and integrate those items into your environment. Any unpacked red boxes that are still sitting around after six months or more indicate that those are items you can probably live without.

Though moving can be stressful, it can also be an opportunity to get out of your rut and reinvent yourself a bit. Try unpacking slower than usual. Live in your new, empty space for a while, and give yourself time to make clear, conscious, satisfying choices about what you want to bring into it.

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© 2005-2007 Kristine Oller, all rights reserved. You are free to use material from these columns in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear. The attribution should read:

“By Kristine Oller of Personalized Organization. Please visit Kristine’s web site at http://www.kristineoller.com for additional information and resources on organizing and career strategy for creative people.”

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