It is interesting to watch someone move. This past few weeks I have been helping my daughter and son-in-law in their process of moving up here to Alaska. They have been married almost a year, and didn’t feel they had a lot of stuff, which really, they didn’t as compared to couples who have been married a longer time and have been living in the same house longer than they have in their rental. But, they had more than they realized.

Before they started packing, they went through their belongings and we hauled to the thrift store a couple of small truck loads of items. I then helped my daughter pack boxes and clean while my son-in-law and son packed the filled boxes and furniture they were taking into the back of a 5×8 foot U-Haul. Let me tell you, that is not as much space as you might think!

As we were packing and filling, it was quickly apparent that this was going to be a difficult tasks of fitting everything in. The things that could get wet went into the back of the truck, the sleeping stuff for the trip along with clothing and food for the drive went into the car, but everything else had to go inside the U-Haul. As time went on and things got tight, more things were set aside for the thrift store.

Once everything was packed, my daughter made the comment that she wished she could pull a few bins out and go through them again to discard more items. Once we arrived in Alaska and unloaded the U-Haul, she again commented that she wanted to go through everything and continue getting rid of unnecessary things.

My grandmother-in-law once commented that 3 moves is a burn out, meaning, if you move around a lot, you get rid of so many items that it’s like your house had caught fire and you lost everything. I don’t think we ever realize how much stuff we accumulate in this life, and how little of it has very much importance. Obviously it’s nice to bring along items that might be costly to replace, but most of what we have can be replaced. Ultimately, we can’t take anything with us when we die anyway.

This gets me thinking about my own house. When my mother-in-law died and I cleaned out her stuff, I started doing a purge myself, realizing that none of it is really that important. But it’s been a few years, and helping in this move has renewed my resolve to keep purging our home of unnecessary items, especially those that have little purpose except to take up space. I don’t know that I have a goal to fit all of my worldly possessions into a 5×8 foot U-Haul, but if I ever did move, I know quite a bit of stuff would not be going with me.