Warning: This is a therapy post.

I’m currently sitting in a mess. Literally. I estimate that I’m about 30% done with a move that will happen in a few days. The mess that surrounds me is the things that haven’t yet made it into a box or bag. And that’s the problem.

As I look around at this mess laid bare, I can help but think of how it’s weighed on my mind over the last four years that I’ve lived in this apartment. Most of it was out-of-sight but it wasn’t out-of-mind. I had thought I had done a pretty good job of keeping down the clutter, but now that I’m having to clean out all of my hiding places I have to face the mess.

Seeing it spread out causes a mild depression that seems to glue me to a comfy chair with my iPad. It’s much easier to mindlessly browse the web than to deal with sorting and cleaning up.

It doesn’t even help that I have a hard deadline. The movers are coming on Thursday no matter if I’m done or not.

I keep circling around the though “how did I manage to get so much stuff into one bedroom.”

I also realize that in the bigger scheme of things, it’s also not that much stuff. I’ve got all the clothes that are making the move into two suitcases and a duffel bag. The grab-and-go camera stuff is in one shoulder bag. The rest is in a plastic storage box. The laptop and tablet with needed accessories are in another backpack. The new mini-desktop computer and related stuff (monitor, keyboard, mouse, and monitor) will fit into another moving box. My desk and shelving unit will get moved as-is, so I don’t have to do much there.

It’s the stuff that has a use, but only gets used rarely that’s killing me. Things like a DVD writer that I took from an old desktop tower. I need to rip a disc every now and then, but this one needs an USB adapter. So that’s another thing that has to go with it. That’s the stuff that builds up into clutter. Things that are useful, but don’t get used that often.

Moving is when that stuff has to be dealt with.

So I write this as a way of procrastinating. It’s easier to sit at a a nice clicky keyboard than do the work of having to sort through this clutter.

One of the reasons I’m having this particular bout of paralysis is because of the contrast of how I lived on the Georgian trip.

There, I was living out of one bag. And I did so for three weeks. I was also able to write every day and wound up with 30,000 words to show for 21 days of writing. Being free from stuff helped a lot with that.

Once I was home, surrounded by my stuff, the words stopped.

The trip reports were easy as they were just recollections of the day. But they were also the beginning of daily writing habit that I had been looking for. I lost that when I came back home and fell into my old routines.

So now I’m not only faced with with having to move, I’m also having to deal with my feelings about the failure to continue the daily writing.

In a way, this move comes at a good time. The memories from the trip are still fresh, but I’ve also had enough time realize how this environment has affected me. For some reason, I’ve never been comfortable in this apartment. Maybe it’s how the rooms are laid out. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t been able to find a good place for my writing desk. Either way, it’s been a drain on my productivity.

Deep-down, I’ve known this. But there wasn’t much I could do about it without moving. Now with a move looming, I’ve noticed how much I’m looking forward to having a new place. It’s also clear that I could just as easily slip back into my old habits with a new location. The hard part will be fighting that urge.

I’m also hoping that by reducing the clutter, I can create new habits that match the new environment. To do so, there’s lot of stuff can’t make the move.

Even after the move as I empty the boxes, I’ll still be throwing stuff out. There’s just no way around it. There’s bound to be more blog posts about how I’m minimizing my stuff. Hopefully they won’t be written as procrastination.

As for the rest of the house, there’s only the kitchen that’s got a lot of “extra” that accumulated over the last four years. The rest is just a couple of recliners and a TV. I’ve worked to keep the common area furniture down to a minimum. This was because I feared I might be the one that had to load it on a truck.

Now that I’ve gotten some of this out of my system, I need to find a trash bag.