packing

Due to a traumatic experience with too much luggage in high school, I tend to be a minimalist packer. I've told this story a bunch of times, even though it's not at all interesting or important, but it really did affect me. It was my first time away from home, for a summer program following junior year. Six weeks in Ithaca New York, and I had no sense of what I needed for a compact time away. I took everything with me. I rarely had to wear an outfit more than a couple times, I brought pictures to decorate my room and CDs for my desk even though I had nothing to play them on. I put all of this into one big luggage, thinking that it would be no sweat since it was one you could pull. It didn't come to mind that everything has its limits. It was so heavy that the pulley broke, on the way to Ithaca. On my way back home, with my bag a bit heavier from accumulating books, it was the biggest pain to put it in the car, transport it, check it, retrieve it. Since then I've been much wiser about what I need, and I lean to the other extreme of bringing the bare minimum.

In the late summer and early fall of 2002, after high school, I packed one very large suitcase and a couple duffel bags and that was everything I took with me to start college. In the late summer and early fall of 2007, I sent about 11 boxes of varying sizes from San Francisco to New Haven to start med school. I also took the suitcase and duffel bags with me on the plane. My packing philosophy hasn't changed much, though after living out-of-school I definitely wanted a feeling of home in my next place, and brought more than the bare minimum for med school. But having packed and moved in some form every year in between, I have learned a few things about packing.

Each year I re-learn, and learn more so, that I have to throw stuff away. I hate it but I have to. I still keep mementos but not as many multiple scraps from the same event. I throw away programs unless they're significant and just keep the tickets. I threw away my one fork and one spoon. I can't keep half-broken (but still usable) plastic trashcans anymore because their shapes are sadly not conducive to fitting in boxes. Yes, I threw away the dried leaves from my Halloween costume. I've given away things like my stereo and fridge. It makes me feel better when things I can't take with me are used by someone else, including toiletries. Gave Jey my detergent once, and Don my toothpaste, Amy my shampoo.

No matter how I try to stick to a system of organization, I never pack quite the same way each time. I knew from the beginning to mix my clothes and books (haha), but there is never a "best" way to package everything else, like shoes and desk stuff and files and vases. There are ways to make them fit that make sense, but there isn't one way that I know to do it every time. Plus there are slight changes in content. So I re-think and re-pack each time. The boxes change, too, of course. I try to re-use them as long as possible and I always over-tape to hold them together, but moving just isn't good for stability and they fall apart.

When you pack, you have to consider everything. You get your big things out of the way, but you have to get rid of those paper clips on the sink, pack the souvenir cup on your bookshelf so it doesn't break, find a place for postcards people have sent you. You go through every inch of your material life whether you want to or not.

Somehow the time and energy it takes increases with each year, even when the amount of stuff stays similar. I used to be able to pack stress-free, even during exams--finish in a day and move by myself in an hour and a half. Last year I remember it being a struggle, deciding what to bring, send, leave behind. Moving this year, it took me a day and several nights to pack, and I enlisted the help of four friends and two cars to move. There seems to be more of me and correspondingly, others.

And in the same way I'm writing minutes before leaving for Vietnam, as time passes I find myself packing up until the end, scrambling when before I could take my time. Things feel semi-incomplete and not fully articulated because I didn't have as much time to think through it all, but it's packaged up anyway and I go on. As heavy as they get, my boxes push me forward.