I’ve been trying to write about
packing at the moment, but it’s been proving just too hard to get the words together
after a day of sheer stress…
As a major life-change (moving
home, moving in with people), and part of the run-up to an even bigger
life-change (emigrating!), I really wanted to document it though, so here is my best effort...
This
might not be the most interesting topic, so here are some random pictures of some paintings I did but had forgotten all about, and then found in a box in the garage. Just to brighten this post up a bit :)
There is also a bit of a
crochet update at the end, so if you’re only interested in that then you
can scroll down to it :)
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| 'Surf Art' acrylic on canvas |
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| I think this one is my favourite |
I know packing / moving house is
meant to be stressful, but I do feel like this is extra bad for a couple of
reasons. Some are our own fault – like not having been organised enough in the
build-up (or just generally) and therefore having to sort through lots of stuff
that we really should have been on top of all along. Or just having lots of
stuff generally for various hobbies, like cycling, watersports, rock climbing,
camping, etc etc…
Some reasons are not our fault –
like having to sort out stuff to stay with us for the next 6 months and stuff
to go into storage; stuff that is precious but cannot come to Australia; stuff
that we don’t need specifically, but
that is too precious for us to feel happy shipping by container, just in case
the container gets lost (apparently they fall of the ships sometimes!!)
Mostly it has been just the two
of us packing, the first time for both of us that we have had to pack up and
move a whole house all at once! (Having mostly lived in rented rooms before, rather
than whole houses, and then when I made my last house move I got to do it in
stages over a long period). This method has involved the most stress, a few
tears, 3 packs of cakes, about 7 packs of biscuits, lots of coffee, and over
100 cups of tea!! There have also been many many occasions where we have just
ground to a halt, totally unable to figure out what to do next…
Yesterday, the cavalry arrived in
the form of my mother-in-law. She arrived with her little van and got to work
immediately, even taking her first cup of tea while working. At first she set
to work alone while my husband and I were also working alone in separate rooms,
but gradually we gravitated towards a team approach, with my mother-in-law in
charge. With business-like direction and confidence and competence radiating
from her, packing became much more efficient and we did loads! She left this afternoon, having helped us pack all of the
kitchen, all of the fragile items, all of our pictures and other framed items, and
various other bits and bobs. I had also sorted out most of the garage, and my
husband made various runs to the tip so that we could recycle as much junk as
possible. We also have a pile of decent stuff to get rid of, we’ll either take
this with us if it will fit so we can do a car boot sale, or we’ll take it
charity shops if it won’t fit – the removal people will take all of our stuff
for storage, and we’ll take all of the stuff that will be staying with us.
We’ve had a bit of rain over the
last few days, which has been a problem as we needed to sort out the garden, but early evening today, after
the cavalry had left (with a fully-laden little van!), we got out into the
garden to clear everything. There was a lot to do as we haven’t touched the
garden in months and months, but after a few hours of hard work we had done
enough. And that brings us up to now! My back and shoulders are aching from
leaning over, lifting things, etc etc, and I’m tired out from days of working from pretty much as
soon as we wake up until it’s almost time to go to bed again. But we have achieved so
much – especially since yesterday – and right now is the calmest I have felt in
days.
During the worst of the stress, a few things
have helped – albeit temporarily. First up is tea, and lots of it! We were
drinking lots of coffee to help us wake up after poor nights’ sleep, but that much
caffeine is not good for stress… The fun rewards of biscuits and cakes gave an
illusion of helping with stress too, but this is obviously not a long-term
solution!!
In amongst all of this stress and
hard work, I have found odd moments to work on my crochet projects. I had read
that crochet / knitting has been proven to help with stress and other
anxiety-related issues, and this seemed like excellent justification for me to
pick up my yarn every time we stopped for tea / thinking / at the end of the
day. Weirdly, with regard to my crochet, I really got into sewing in ends. This
has never happened before, normally I hate sewing in the ends, and dread
tackling a big build-up of them. I can only guess that the stress-relief
achieved by this rhythmic, repetitive and rewarding task, has somehow taught me
to enjoy it. I hope this feeling lasts!!
So far, I have done all of the
ends on the Glastonbury squares I have so far – and I have also done a few more
of the circles, ready to turn into squares. 14 ends per square for these, and I
had about 7 or 8 to do. (Apologies for poor photo quality, staging is tricky in the middle of packing, and I don't have the time to take photos when the light is good!)
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| Blanket squares and Packed up boxes! |
I have also done all of the ends
in my Cuddly Hexagons Blanket (so far). 8 ends per hexagon, and about 17 of
them had needed ends sewing in.
Here’s the reverse just to prove
it!
I have to say that packing feels horrendous right now, this is a huuuuuge wake-up call for us to improve our house keeping and related life skills! A bit of learning to be done there soon :)
While the current situation may be unpleasant, it is only temporary, and there is plenty to look forward to - for now we just need to keep knuckling down!
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