It’s funny how moving from here to there makes you see large portions of your stuff as crap.

I spent the day packing and moving crap. More specifically, I spent the day binding old crap and setting it in the hallway so that someone else can throw it away. I put crap I’ll need into boxes so that someone else can carry it to a new building. I also carried some other crap to my new desk.

I’m in the process of moving offices because, for the past year, the school I work at has been building a new building around the old one. This involved first tearing down two-thirds of the old building, often while we were in it. (The rubble decorating this site shows off some of that destruction.)

This has got me thinking about the number of times I’ve moved in my life and how my perception of my stuff changed each time. I remember living in places when I was little, but I don’t actually remember moving to them. The first move where I remember moving stuff was when we moved from Denver to Hayden, Co. That one doesn’t count, though, because we simply moved our trailer from one place to another. Serious decisions were therefore not required–at least by me.

Then we moved from our trailer to a house. What I remember most about that one is how all the stuff from the seemingly smaller trailer didn’t seem to fit in the larger house. (I suspect this is why I’m a Doctor Who fan: I lived in the TARDIS.)

We then moved from Colorado back to Kansas. I don’t remember making any serious decisions then. The moves after that were pretty basic: home to fraternity, fraternity to apartment. Everything I owned could easily fit into my car. Serious decisions were therefore not required.

The first time I had to make serious decisions was moving from the apartment to Albania. Imagine how hard it is to pack for a two week trip. Now multiply that difficulty out to two years and you’ll understand the decisions I had to make. (Spoiler: “He chose poorly.) In Albania I had to move four times (long story that will take many posts to explain) and each time began to reconsider how much crap I had. Then I left Albania and managed to shed a lot of crap, especially as a lot of my crap had worn out thanks to two years in a developing country.

I spent two years in Mississippi and had my first realization that I might actually be an adult when, for the first time ever, all the crap I owned couldn’t fit in my car.

From Mississippi I moved to Nou-Machi, Japan “for two years”. Three years later, I had my most expensive move, I moved from quaint, quiet little Nou-machi to megatropolitan Tokyo. To imagine how expensive this move was imagine driving the 21 miles from Salina, Kansas to Abilene, Kansas and then back again. Every mile, open the car window and toss out a 100 dollar bill. By the time you get back to Salina, you will have spent less than that move cost me (including moving crap and getting an apartment).

Finally, I moved my wife into the apartment, found an infant on the front step of my in-laws’ house (for the record: this is the official story we tell her; officially the second was found four years later under a bridge.) and then moved everyone to our current location just outside of Tokyo. That move involved a pretty serious purge of crap. (For the record, I kept the wife and child although I’m still not sure why they kept me. And to the person/people going “mmm hmmm” right now: Shut up.)

Now I’m moving out of the desk I’ve worked at for 14 years and after all this I’ve learned to toss out a lot crap. Not as much as I should, though. My new desk is already full of crap.

Eventually, and I know this because it always happens: I’ll need some of the crap I threw out.