Just keep packing, just keep packing or "living with boxes"
Now it has started, the move to the new house is close and I´m packing our stuff in boxes. Small like shoes boxes, a little larger ones (wine boxes) and of course banana boxes from our food store. And then we have the foldable move boxes as well. So I suppose we have a lot of stuff, since we have all these boxes. It´s amazing how much a cupboard can hold really.
We´re not moving for another 3 weeks but our plan is to get the new house in shape the last week so the packing has to be finished before Valentines day.
Things that are hard to part from emerges from the store areas every move, sometimes in the same box, unopened, as in last move. Like the box with my old schoolbooks from my first years. I have rescued my essays but the rest will go for recycling. My hardearned notes from the university will probably go the same way. Parting from university notes is a bit like throwing away what you know. Actually most of it was knowledge held in my mind only for a short while. Who needs to know Boyle´s constant by heart when you easily can find it in a book?
Other things that is equally hard to part from, but for other reasons, is my partners hideous things from his childhood home, like the artwork on a base of brown with crosstiches and a motif of a swedish cabin. I, of course, have no such hideous thing that I cling on to, at least thats my opinion. My nice sailing boat grandfather gave me, a little ruff in the making for example. It´s dear to me and have not been in a box. But some comments have made me realize there might be more beatiful boats, like the ones Olle builds. If I ever get a boat from Olle, I will have it on display forever. I would like to have a model of Bris, our childhood boat. But I have no skill in making boats. I like to use them.
What we need and what we keep are so far between, I don´t need even half of it, but I like having it. Like my glass insulator from an american telegraph post or my stones from the icelandic lava field. I like se them as "memory markers", they quickly moves my mind to other places I´ve seen. My home becomes the world, in a way.
Another funny thing among things I keep is 200 hundred cassette tapes with music. I have started to recollect some of the music, but it´s hard to find. Some of them are from my childhood really, I still have my original copy of ABBAs "Super Trooper". My first ever band I have lost, it was a Boney M record. What was your first music, apart from children songs?
Of course some of the music is not so good, and some is still holding, and is much better than music made today. I beleive this could be a topic, "Music was better before", I´m sure PP agrees but I´m not sure about OK.
Well, I better get on with the packing.
/EH
8 comments:
I got the message about a boat model. Patience is the word here - the three-masted ship I am now building (and which is very close to ready) has been going on for six years, I found out the other day! And I have two models I have started on but which are resting until the big ship model is out of the way.
A practical advice: A full household is a lot of boxes. It helps a lot if they are of the same size and can be loaded on top of each other. You will find that you are short of floor space soon otherwise. And the removal goes much faster, you can use a 'pirra' (two-wheeled cart with handles)and load two or three boxes in one go. So it pays to get a lot of boxes. I used up 120 removal boxes in my latest removal but then half of them were for books. Beware of shop bags and banana boxes.
Why should I beware of banana boxes, they are in the size I can carry at most...no bigger is possible for me, and they stack well too. But a pirra is on our buying list because the old one broke down under a heavy flower pot.
About the boat, it was more of a wishful thinking and appriciation of your beautiful work. Not something you should feel obliged to do.
Nice to hear about all your boxes. I love boxes, all sizes, but they have to be very neat and have a good colour to be in our cupboards. Most I like those for shoes and for boots. They are suitable for almost everything.
By the way - a fine photo in the blog right now. The cat. In winter. In snow.
Dear EH and sister,
I have a distinct memory that Super Trouper was my first cassette tape that was a real recorded tape and not just something recorded from the radio or TV. I remember us recording Melodifestivalen on mom's tape recorder from the TV - all of us had to be really quiet, and it didn't work very well. The quality was, you know, absolutely horrible. I have my tapes too, but I never play them.
We spend out time trying to make more storage space in our house, and the whole attic is full of boxes. Most of them have old toys and school books in them and one of these days we will have to sort through and get rid of some.
I love the cat photo too! It looks so snug and warm, like the snow is a blanket and not cold at all.
I´m surprise nobody commented my text on hideous things, and what we keep and not. I thought I get a reaction, about the brown crosstiched art work, yep it´s staying, but its NOT gonna be on my wall....
In answer to Pippi, I too like shoe boxes, and as I told you before LS used to put pictures all over them in collage. I don´t have any left but I remember a very large box used as paper bin in our parents study. And some small too.
And to LS, I have both Super Trooper and Visitor here as well as ABBAs greatest hits 1 and 2. I will put them in my remember box. Probably it´s yours, the Super Trooper. " It´s like a suuper truuper, things are gonna find me, but I wont be truuuu, like I always dooo, .... I have no idea if this is the text but it´s my memory can remember. And we where so small, I didn´t start learning english until I was 9 or 10. We just sang it as it sounded. I remember the tape recorder as well, thought about it when I wrote the post,funny you think of the same thing.
Have you thought about OK´s leopard who was named "Tiger"? It´s from an ABBA song.
Today the cat have a real snow blanket, we have snow since yesterday, only a little but still.
Hideous things - I don't think I have a lot of them actually, but then this is a matter of taste. Maybe my husband would disagree. These days I try to be selective. I did buy some things in Ecuador, but only things I really liked and can live with for many years. Maybe I need to take a walk through the house with new eyes. Also, things that mean a lot from the past are not hideous if they have a personal meaning. But a lot of old things I keep in 'sentimental' boxes and those things are not out and shown.
Everything has a frost blanket today and the birds are very busy eating seeds from the feeders. This morning we had juncos, cardinals, flickers, grackles, blue jays, and house sparrows. Funny names birds have here in the US!
PS. I just HAD to add the label CARDBOARD BOX to this post.
Ah, cardboard box...
"Back then we had to record music from the TV with a microphone. If you try to tell that to young people today, they won't believe you!"
:)
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