Unlikely Time Capsules

As we go through this process of moving, we come to that point in our lives (some of us come to it often) where we realize it is time to sell, give or trash many things we have been holding on to for months or even years.

We have two weeks left until the movers come. This would be our first move using professional movers. We do the packing, but they supervise the loading/unloading and do all the driving. This frees us to drive our minivan with the family at our own pace. I kind of like it. But there's still a lot to do in the next two weeks.

We had a moving sale, and got rid of many things we realized we didn't need to take with us to Texas. Greta's baby toys were phased out. Since she is four now, we decided it was time to remove the baby rattles and so forth. She rarely played with them, obviously, but she hated to see them go. This time, we held firm - the baby toys have to go!

An interesting thing happened along the way. We had to go through drawers. All drawers in furniture have to be emptied in preparation for the loading. When we have moved ourselves in the past, we simply took the drawers out, loaded the dresser on the truck, then put the drawers back in. We followed this same procedure for unloading, in reverse. This time, all drawers have to be emptied - period. Karl found himself going through his nightstand drawers. Although we have moved three times in the last 10 years, we didn't have to empty the drawers before. Now that he was going through them, he found what amounts to a personal time capsule.

Karl and I had several good laughs over the outdated, useless and 'did we really keep that' things in his nightstand drawers. There were many wonderful memories in there as well, pictures of the family and so forth.

I found myself wondering, how long would it have been before we went through these drawers, weeding out junk and waste if we weren't forced to do so because of the moving truck company's policy? There are many things we should do for ourselves, but we don't often do them until we are forced to by some sort of outside circumstances.

I also wonder how many things are in my life, in my heart, that really need to be weeded out? Perhaps I need to let the professional heart surgeon give me guidelines that will force me to go through, open up and get rid of that which only ties me down.