Friday, October 31, 2008

Pod People

I imagine by now, no one is reading this anymore. I know it's been 2 months (2 months!?) since I've posted anything, but it seems like things suddenly got so....busy. So if you have checked back to see if I've posted, I'm sorry about the long delay. Time got away from me. Again.

The biggest time-sucker, by far, is that our hot water heater blew up and flooded our basement, requiring us to remove every single item in our basement. We had to rent a POD for storage of all the stuff. We haven't missed a single stinkin' thing. (Well, actually, there are numerous books I wish I could get to. But other than books, I don't miss a thing.)

How things come full-circle.

It was two years ago, at about this time of year, that we were unboxing from a POD. We had tried to sell our house, couldn't find one we liked as much as the one we have, didn't get any offers on our place, and decided in the end to stay put. During our Massive Stuff Reintroduction program, we got to talking about how much Stuff we had, and how we didn't really miss a single thing during the three months it was all crammed into a POD. Sadly, we knew we couldnt keep the POD so we proceeded to return all the odds and ends into our home. Which suddenly started to feel very full indeed. Shortly thereafter, we heard a story on The Compact on NPR, and the rest is history.

Now here we are, almost 11 months along into the Compact, and we're packing our sh*t into a POD again, and not missing a darn thing. Dominic is single-handedly re-doing sheetrock in the basement, painting, fixing the trim and the floor and re-paneling his woodshop. (all while the kids and I sleep, bless his heart) Sometime soon, we'll re-paint the office downstairs and the new carpet will be installed. Then, it'll be time to move back into the basement. Time for another Massive Stuff Reintroduction program. To say I dread that day is an understatement.

How is it that we can go a whole year without purchasing anything new (with some exceptions of course) and yet still, even after culling, donating, having a Mega Sale, and culling again, we still have enough stuff to fill a POD? And why, oh, why are we putting it back in our house when we haven't missed anything, save the (massive in its own right) book collection?