Boxes

A couple weeks ago, a stack of opened, flattened moving boxes lined the walls of our living room. Pieces of cardboard cut from non-standard or broken boxes piled up next to our dining room table. The corrugated mountain served as a constant reminder that we were on our way to being settled in our new home.

Just a sampling of the boxes

Less than a month before, these same boxes surrounded me as I sat at my desk writing my previous blog entry. At the time, they were full, my possessions carefully packed within their cardboard walls.

Weeks before, I climbed the pull-down ladder to stack the same boxes by size, bringing down a few smaller ones to begin the packing process. Knowing our time in our rental house would be temporary, we had saved most of our packing materials when we moved in.

I recently posted on our new Nextdoor page, asking if anyone needed the boxes. A few hours later, a couple’s Suburban was full, and our living room was more spacious. A few days later, my husband dropped the cardboard scraps at a recycling facility.

***

In 2003, I moved home from college, all my belongings packed in my car and the back of a U-Haul van. I don’t remember much about packing up that year, but I still have anxiety dreams about moving out of the dorms where I lived my first three years at Southwestern. In the dreams, there is always so much stuff and never enough time to get it packed.

In 2004, I moved out of my parents’ house and into my first solo apartment. I accumulated dishes, décor, and even a washer and dryer.

Moving next time required additional trips, but my new apartment was less than an hour away. Now I had two bedrooms, and my parents gifted me two large bookcases to fill my new office space.

A few years later, I moved again. A childhood friend was returning to the area, and we decided to room together.

When I moved out of that apartment in 2008, it was to share a space with my now husband. I let my roommate take my living room set and the washer and dryer to her new home out of state.

I got married in 2010, and soon it was time to move again, this time out of the country. We separated our things into three piles: items we would store for the next year, items for the movers to pack, and items we would need before our shipment arrived in the Netherlands.

The move to Europe was temporary—an opportunity granted to us by my husband’s work. And the next summer we moved back home to my parents’ house while we looked for a home to purchase. Many of our belongings remained in storage.

A few months later, we found a home and it was time to move again. I had started grad school, and we knew we’d be in Denton for the next five years. For the first time in a long time, all of our stuff came out of storage and out of boxes. My parents moved soon after, and they brought over my childhood belongings. We settled in, and when my son was born our belongings multiplied, filling each corner of our home.

In 2017, I entered the national academic job search, and the next summer, we relocated to Oklahoma. I left my boxes of comic books and the dollhouse my great-grandfather made at my parents’ house, knowing we’d be moving again soon.

I promised myself I wouldn’t stay in the visiting position for more than my 3-year contract, and as the pandemic forced self-reflection, my spouse and I decided to prioritize location.

So, a month ago, we made the 10-hour trip to Colorado, most of our belongings in the moving truck but our vehicles still filled to the brim.

This move is different. There is no end point. Perhaps when my son grows older, we’ll want a smaller place. Perhaps at some point an opportunity will drag us away. But the plan right now is to stay. We have chosen this place.

There is no reason to save the boxes.

***

Still, in many ways the move seems more journey than destination. Just last week, our new bedroom furniture arrived. We lugged the 170lb boxes over the threshold and began to open and disassemble them. A new cardboard pile grew by the window. The size, however, pales in comparison to the one from a few weeks ago.

We are making progress, but sometimes the progress stalls and sometimes we seem to take a step back.

***

At the end of November, I will pull the last of the moving boxes from the basement closet. These were the ones I packed first as I took down our Christmas tree in January. They contain decorations and lights, which will eventually return to their plastic tubs after the holiday. Boxed up, but not for a move, these decorations serve as a microcosm of the larger cycle of packing that began back in college. We may get rid of the boxes, but the journey is not over yet.

A path without a clear destination