The Move

Today was a back-breaking day. I had spent the last 2 weeks packing up my apartment, a couple of hours each time, on and off. The piles of personal effects had grown to ginormous proportions. Huge bags (capacity to take a full human body without the need to chop it up to fit - just as a comparison), warehouse storage boxes and a ton of plastic and paper bags had filled the floors and cupboards. I had ruthlessly (or so I thought) culled the pile by throwing out files, personal papers, old love letters, magazines, bags, clothes and various odds and ends. But still, it was literally packing up a whole apartment and my old life and the number of photo albums and paper envelopes containing film and negatives were surprising. I guess I had documented my life in pictures, after all, a picture says a thousand words, and now they will be relegated to storage, I am not sure how often I would be looking at them after this, but at this point in time, I don't feel like it's time to just discard them all yet. As it is, I had just destroyed letters which were 18 years old, perhaps it wouldn't take me quite this long to get rid of the photos.

We spent an hour loading up 3 cars, with plenty of strategising as to which car can take what, and how we were going to load up the cars so as to have the best fit. It was just as well S and I didn't go to to the gym earlier as planned, we had plenty of exercise with the move, and were all hot, sweaty and tired by the end of it. Unloading was much easier, we had employed the assembly line/division of labour system. Everyone moved with military precision, the quick, rhythmic movements were like clockwork, we didn't even have to really think about anything. Everything was quickly loaded into mum's spare room. After everything was piled in there neatly, they didn't even look as much as before. It also helped that there was a humungous, empty TV carton that I had stuffed all the loose plastic and paper bags into so that everything looked pretty organised.

Despite all that, there are still quite a few miscellaneous items left in the apartment including 2 huge trunks, 1 full of books, a step ladder, a couple of paintings, a framed mirror, a huge bag of bedding, 3 more boxes of odds and ends and several plastic bags worth of alcohol plus wine glasses. That's what I can remember, after my tiring day. I do hope that's ALL...

Continuation of the Move - another 2.5 car loads thereafter, to transport the leftovers, plus I wanted to take my mini hi-fi system on which I had spent many happy nights listening to the radio while lounging on my sofa in the living room reading a book, or watching the rain splatter on the floor to ceiling windows. Those are my happiest memories in that apartment and now that the apartment has been packed and put on the market, all I have are photos and memories...