Since I was able to start working, I have been (almost obsessively) budgeting my income and balancing my spending money and savings. Though I gave a lot more weight to my savings account all to make sure that this one day when I could move out would be possible. When picking grad schools, I purposefully applied to places where, if I chose to go, would force me to move. I had a feeling if I never pushed myself like that, I would be forever stuck with my parents. With having to move out, it’s making this year’s spring cleaning list more of a doozey.
For starters, I would be moving from an entire house to a smaller apartment. Granted, not everything in the house is mine. I won’t be needing o lug a whole couch upstairs… but I will be needing to cut down my wardrobe… by a lot. I have a whole closet filled with clothes I obsessively keep because they have meaning to me. That meaning? Well, they’re mine. I bought them. Regardless of whether I paid $10 or $70. However, a lot of them are older clothes, stuff that doesn’t fit, or is absolutely riddled with holes, tears, and cat fur. Cleaning out my wardrobe and saying sayonara to my kid’s small NASCAR jacket is a must.
I am a little lucky in that even if the apartment is unfurnished, my boyfriend has his own bed and frame and all that jazz. That leaves me with the ability to think twice about missing my 30-year-old box string handed down by my sister. Even old pieces of furniture like my fairy and flower shelf I repurposed into a makeshift bookshelf can, honestly, just go. I’ve planned out the contents of my future apartments… and no, old drawers with no knobs did not make the cut.
Lastly, this spring I want to start prepacking things I know I will not need until way after I move out: winter stuff. Now that it’s averaging 60 degrees out per day, I feel like I have lost the necessity for wool gloves, thick pea coats, and thick wool hats, at least for the time being. I will definitely need them again as I face the cold winter wind wherever I end up choosing, but for now… this is something that can ease my packing a bit more.
This year, it is less about opening space and more about clearing out junk that won’t be useful to me in an apartment. I have to start thinking in that mindset that I won’t have the luxury of a shed, or multiple levels, or even the solace of being in my own house. This will be a place where I need to put my organizational skills to the test to truly figure out what I need in my life.