I hauled home more boxes from work today, and spent most of the evening cleaning out the kitchen, scrubbing the cabinets, cleaning all our wine and liquor bottles, and filling more boxes with our belongings. For people who live in a small apartment who don’t think they like owning “stuff” that much, we have already filled about 23 boxes with our “stuff.” Seeing all of it together boggles my mind that this small apartment held all this stuff, not to mention all the things we sold, donated, or tossed out.

I was talking to my friend this weekend about the packing process, and she said she could never imagine anyone else packing up her things for her. “Why would I want someone else touching and packing up all my things?” she said. “It’s my stuff. How do I know they will pack it the way I want it to be packed?” Well, it’ll never be done exactly the way you would have done it. But at least if money didn’t matter, you could pay someone else to deal with all this calamity.

But I’m too cheap and too much of a control freak to do that. I actually do find more comfort knowing that I packed all these boxes other than some random Joe-Schmo who could easily toss all my wine glasses into a box between thin layers of bubble wrap and think they did a good job.