My Life in Boxes

Seven months ago, my roommate and I moved from our run down apartment with holes in the walls to one that was in slightly better shape. This move was temporary, so that the landlord could renovate and refurbish our old apartment and we could move back in. Today, we did just that.

My room in the temporary apartment was significantly smaller than the one I have here. Consequently, many of my belongings have been packed away in one box or another for the last seven months as I was living in a room in which I could barely even turn around and had to climb over things to move around.

This evening, I was sorting through the many boxes that have been gathering dust in the temporary apartment. In them I found many items that made me wonder why I still have them. I'm a bit of a pack rat, in many ways. I have a tendency to hold on to things, long after the reason for me having them is gone. Most of the time, I'm just not really sure what to do with things. It's not that any of these items have any utility anymore, but I always ask myself if I really want to give up the experience of finding a particular item and remembering, "Oh yeah...this is from that time that I..."

In one box, for example, I found the following: A birthday card signed by all my former coworkers at The Shoah Foundation, my Eurail pass from 1998, a fake check I'd written to myself for one hundred million dollars, an address list of many of the people I met in Kosovo, a stack of my business cards from when I worked at UCLA, a Saturday school notice given to a friend of mine in 1991...and so on.

The question is...do any of these things really do me any good right now? All night I have been forcing myself to throw some items out...no matter how much I think I might want to keep my receipt from my 2002 stay at the Hotel Europa in Bonn, Germany, or that anthropology essay I wrote on the Dobe !Kung back in 1993, it really does me no good.

Moving back in here today...going through these boxes...it has made me take stock of certain things and caused me to do a bit of self-reflection. I'm not saying that there have been any life changing epiphanies or anything like that. All I did was move apartments. But...I don't think I need this coaster from my 28th birthday party anymore.