Crystal

A neighbour is moving. Why does it freak me out?

Well, it seems like a déjà vu.

Huge truck…movers…boxed house hold items …wrapped furniture…irregular odd stuff…probably, it is an action replay.

Every time I relocate I take this solemn oath to renounce worldly possessions and live like a hermit on the Himalayas with the barest minimum, a camping bed and a hair drier to call my own. Okay, add a camera too.

I was born and lived in the same house until marriage. And then, the evacuation order was thrust into my shivering hands. After 16 moves involving a significant distance and learning to throw away favourite trash, still moving is a pain in the posterior.

When I packed from Kenya I was allowed to shrink the entire house into 15 boxes. Impossible feat! Every room was overflowing with the 10 years’ accumulations. After selling, dumping, donating and presenting some items I was left with a room full of essentials. Packing the first box was a piece of cake...by 15…Ouf! and by 30; I wanted to scream like a woman in labour, “Never again”. Then the Freight Company took my pains away.

This container arrived in Vancouver 2 months later, enjoying its cruise experience with a stopover at Amsterdam. In the meantime, I had to buy everything in the kitchen thus doubling my stuff and reducing my space.

My recent move from Vancouver was a calming experience as the three-men-army from the movers did the packing, loading and unloading. 
                                         

Before the packing, I took some effort to dispose off unwanted things.

Old clothes were put in the blue bag for the Salvation Army. I would like to see their plight figuring out what to do with the Indian costumes.

A serious danger while packing is, the moment I start, I run into the risk of associating and recollecting events related to the objects. One time I spent the whole night packing and shuttling between reveries and slept at 5.00 a.m to catch a flight at 6.00 a.m. The trip was in a semi coma though. But pulling out everything from everywhere and getting lost in the mess is pretty exciting. 
                                              
While clearing I stumbled upon numerous bags. There were travel bags of different sizes (a loathsome one with Spiderman printed all over-an impulse buy by my husband, now it is carried in another bag to avoid embarrassment), camera bags, back packs, 'go green' shopping bags, school bags and hand bags (my flashy golden bag which made my daughter ROFL and the perplexed owner could never use it...). Apparently, some were donated to the bagless.

Throughout the packing stages I discovered many Allen keys of all sizes from different quarters of the house. Where did they come from? ‘Assemble-It-Yourself’ furniture will provide you such solid mementos. Now, I can throw an Allen key party and tighten every loose screw in N. America.

There are some things you have no idea what to do with, like my old vacuum cleaner.

It was a clumsy, cumbersome device. This contraption was bought at a flee market for a meager $10, when we were jobless and moved into a fully carpet house to solve. It looked like something you get crossing an army tank with a mammoth and sounded like an angry tractor. Surely it had to GO!

So I left it at the curbside. I could see an apparition of Al Gore with his Nobel medal hovering above like King Hamlet’s ghost before Horatio. It warned me about the imminent danger my dumping posed to our planet. Ignoring it, I abandoned the red machine. The garbage truck did not pick it.

I stuck a big ’FREE’ note on it, but it stood in the rain and snow with a dilapidated car as its companion. On the third day I found a notice from the city council, struck on the car, to remove it immediately or it would be towed at the owner's expense. When I read that I hurriedly took my VC indoors and called a waste disposal company. They charge $22 for the removal. Hmmm…one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

Okay, I decided to be generous and leave it in the house to make life easier for the next occupants. On departure day, the friend who gave us a ride to the airport did one last check peeking into every room and screamed, “There is a VC in the closet’ and brought it out. I narrated its story. He said, “I can use it in my new factory". Phew! Problem solved.

All my things were delivered punctiliously by the movers. The strange unsolved puzzle is the box with all my plates which went missing in action.

So…my prescription for a painless move is to become a hermi…Oh, wait a sec! There’s a big sale on at Home Sense........Ciao.