Boxed In

I was fortunate enough to have today off work, courtesy of Presidents' Day, so I'd driven up to upstate NY for the long weekend to see M. Since he has just relocated up to the "North Country" region, we'd signed a lease for a townhouse up there, & he physically moved in on February 1st, with just a couple of car-loads of belongings at that time. Sadly, however, the removal company delivered the rest of his life there last week. He warned me in advance that the whole downstairs area was completely filled with boxes, but I really wasn't quite prepared for the true extent of the carnage until I was face to face with the demons!

The floor space here was really the only free space available downstairs!

My heart sank when I walked in & saw all the boxes.  I already knew that M was a hoarder, but I wasn't quite fully prepared for the full extent of it, & I knew it was going to be a very "long weekend"! M is a total procrastinator, although he does work well when motivated, & especially when he sees rewards from his labor. 

I knew that if we were going to make any real headway here, I was going to have to find some happy medium between lighting a fire under his ass & hanging back & making the purging seem like it was his idea.

I used to think I was a pack-rat until this past weekend. Does anyone else own 3 clothes irons? And truthfully, with all the kitchenware I opened, you'd think Martha Stewart lived there - and I reminded him of this as I was trying to break my way into the kitchen through the pizza boxes & empty Arby's bags…..

Dozens of the boxes were literally filled with paperwork just thrown into them - receipts, unopened magazines & newspapers from many years ago, photos, random things like pens, pencils, notepads. You name it, it was probably there. And in multiples of multiples. I didn't know how the weekend was going to pan out. 

The first day was a hard slog. You know how it feels when you start opening boxes after a move - you work for hours, & even though you feel the physical effects of your efforts, at the end of the day you really only "see" that a little bit of space has been cleared. So, for a couple of nights, even though I was able to get to the kitchen area to cook, we had no space to sit anywhere, so ate dinner standing against the counter. It usually takes a fair bit to get me to the point where I vocalize that I'm feeling overwhelmed by something, mostly because I tend to deal with stress by digging into the problem & trying to progress to reach some kind of resolution. By Friday evening, however, I was verbalizing my overwhelmed feeling. I felt like we were getting nowhere, & although I could see that boxes were being opened, I could also see that M was merely "relocating" their contents to different rooms! I did at least find some solace in our trash run though - we filled M's car with empty boxes & on our travels late Friday afternoon, we managed to find an empty dumpster to accept them! A small victory.

Oh & I was presented with some lovely flowers for my efforts too - what girl couldn't love a man who buys her flowers?

Bigger victories followed, however, and from day 2 onwards we managed to start making some serious headway. I don't know how it happened, but the purging began. Extra woks & other pans were allowed to be placed into a box for donation. Clothes were also allowed to be grouped into bags for donation too. I've seriously never known a man who owns so many clothes. I'd estimate that he owns about 10x the amount of clothes that I own, & I'm pretty sure that is an underestimation. And shoes. Jeezy peeps…..somehow I managed to get him to donate a box of old Army boots (about 12 pairs of them). And I lost count of the number of times I heard the phrase: "I've been looking for that!". Oh & let's not mention the 3 trash bags filled with (ancient) Army uniforms to donate. Many of which originated from his basic training days (M has been "Army" for 15 years).

Many of the boxes had actually never been opened in about 4 years - they'd been moved from IL to GA & never opened. Then they were placed in storage again while M was overseas last year, & there they remained until they were relocated up to NY last week. 

Sorry - I'm rambling now…...I can summarize the whole experience by telling you I was a little "in shock"! But I can also say that I was really proud of M for all the purging he did though. I understand completely how difficult it is to part with belongings, especially when you've been through life experiences that triggered some kind of "nesting" or "collecting" activity. But I could also tell that he really enjoyed seeing the fruits of his labor once he did start purging, & this kind of inspired him to continue (this shocked me too, I must say! I didn't think we'd purge half as much as we succeeded in dealing with). Although some things were clearly harder than others to part with, & were just sequestered away  - like his Boy Scout sleeping mat from a few decades ago. And what 35 year old man doesn't need a Chicago Bears lunchbag?

I suggested that the saved lunchbag should hopefully curb the fast-food runs!

Eventually we carved out enough space to be able to open up a table downstairs. It was wonderful being able to sit down to eat dinner. By this point, my catchphrase had become "Go Army.com" since I was sick & tired of opening bags & boxes of goodies with this phrase written on them. M was an Army recruiter in previous years, & still had a veritable collection of just about everything "Army" that you could wish for with that darn motto plastered on it. Pens, pencils, notepads, CDs, staplers, water bottles, T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, computer mousepads, breathalizer sticks……..oh my word, I'm hyperventilating again just thinking about it…..but at least by Day 3 there were even some "Go Army" lawn chairs for us to sit on at dinner time!

Table For Two

Anyway, by the time I left this afternoon, we had made a total of 10 dumpster runs, & additionally had filled the downstairs bathroom with trash bags of clothes & bedding to donate. There were many other boxes to donate too. As well as the 3 trash bags & one huge plastic tote box filled with shredded paper, courtesy of the gazillion bank documents etc, that had been kept from back in the days pre-abacus. 

At least after 3 days of solid work we were both feeling pretty good with the results, especially as we'd managed to visit some furniture stores over the weekend too, & had chosen some things. So yesterday we did a trash run, purged a heap of boxes & trash, & then headed to the furniture store to order a sofa, some chairs & a split box-spring that will be able to make its way up the stairs.  Then we warded off cabin fever by heading out for an afternoon drive. We headed out to Sackets Harbor & watched some loonies walking out on Lake Ontario to do some ice fishing!

Walking on Lake Ontario

Ah well, if you're still with me now, thanks! There may even be some community service hours in it for you…….it's been a stressful few days watching the boy purge & not-purge, but overall I'm really proud of him because I know how stressful it is allowing "things" to just disappear from your life.

I just spent 5 hours driving back to Massachusetts, & he's playing video games & has been very quiet. I think that sums up how he's feeling about it all!

Happy New Year

Well Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas, with at least a day or two off to enjoy in your own special way. 

It's been a busy one for me, but very enjoyable. Last year I'd saved a bunch of vacation days to use at the end of the year & it gave me a lovely extended holiday, so I decided to do the same again this year. Last Christmas I visited the Grand Canyon & had decided to do something equally fun this year. Naturally though, I was unaware that I'd be having company this Christmas!

Regardless though, my saved vacation days this year enabled me to finish work on December 21st, & I don't return until tomorrow, January 3rd. Since I do have the privilege of having someone nice in my life now, I was lucky enough not to have to spend the holidays alone again. I've always been very resourceful on my own & always put my free time to good use - being single has never stopped me traveling or enjoying life. But I'm sure the majority of folk will agree that fun times are even better when enjoyed with good company.

This holiday just happens to also coincide with M's relocation - he is in the process of a PCS from GA to NY, so is using the time to enjoy a heap of his saved leave. So we decided to combine business with pleasure over Christmas, & drove out to Watertown, upstate NY for a couple of days to do some apartment-hunting. Then we continued on to spend a couple of days on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.

This was my 2nd trip to the Falls - I was there in July 2009, so as you can imagine, the scenery was quite different this time of year! I was excited about capturing the falls at night since they are lit up so beautifully. My wonderful man was a real trooper, in spite of the frigid temperatures, & humored me quite nicely by carrying my tripod and never complaining about freezing his bum off on Christmas Eve!

I loved the view of the Canadian or Horseshoe falls with the freezing mist rising up high!

The American Falls & Bridal Veil Falls were kind of joined at the hip by chunks of ice, and looked fabulous, especially all lit up.

We were also lucky enough to catch some fireworks over the Falls on Christmas Eve too!

We went back for more freezing temperatures on Christmas morning to catch the scenery in daylight too. Needless to say, the mist remained the dominant feature of the Canadian Falls!

I especially loved the white-out view of the Canadian Falls at Table Rock.

And it was also great to see the icy slabs over the American & Bridal Veil Falls in daylight too!

Afterwards on Christmas Day we had some indoor fun doing some indoor skydiving at this place! Sadly we couldn't take cameras inside, so I have no pics of us in action, but it was fabulous fun. There is a video on the webpage that you can check out though, so you can get an idea of how it works.

Later we drove out to Niagara On The Lake, a little way outside the Falls region, and visited Fort Niagara. Although it was ridiculously cold, we still really enjoyed wandering around the site, and the snowy scenes really added a very bleak perspective on how life must've been for soldiers there back in the day.

Christmas evening brought a nice dinner at Canyon Creek, one of the restaurants in the Fallsview Casino. Any of you who've been to Niagara Falls will know that it's horrendously touristy and over-priced, especially when it comes to eating out. Combine this with a major holiday & you're left with less of a choice when it comes to where to eat for the evening! So we were doubly open-minded about what lay ahead, but ended up extremely happy with the outcome! We both had decent food & also managed to get a nice view of the Falls from the nearby window too!

I mentioned earlier that we'd started out in Watertown, NY to do some apartment-hunting. We had a really busy day of this on the 23rd, & found 3 decent prospects; however, late afternoon we found a random apartment complex by accident that was very new, & decided it would be worth a look. Sadly they had already closed for the holiday, but we were both in agreement that we'd prefer to see it & not like it, than ignore it & always wonder!

So after our Canadian adventure, it was back to Watertown on the 26th to check out this place! We stayed over at The Inn at Fort Drum on the base, & then drove to the new apartment complex early on the 27th. We were so glad we'd taken the time to come back to it - their townhomes are beautiful & this place turned out to be the winner for us, & the paperwork was signed & made official there & then after we'd seen a couple of different home options.

Then we headed back to the Boston region & took the long but scenic route through the Adirondacks. Somewhere north of Lake Placid I caught this lovely snow scene:

OK folks, I'm going to end this post here, I'd hate to prolong it further & bore you you to tears with New Year's Eve's commentary too!

Hope you managed to ring out a great end to 2010 & ring in an even better 2011. Here's to a wonderfully prosperous year for us all.