Madness, I tell you...

The lack of posts has a reason: life is C-R-A-Z-Y as of late.

For one thing, we're moving.

Again.

Justin and I realized that this will be our fourth living space in the span of two years. That's right - by the time we settle into our new abode, we will have lived in FOUR different places since tying the knot in 2009.

That is four times of packing boxes, crossing our fingers that nothing gets damaged in said boxes, breaking down furniture [ or not...because it's sooo not worth it to attempt to reconstruct those IKEA pieces sans the original instructions...], loading / unloading U-Hauls, re-assembling non-IKEA furniture, unpacking those mountains of boxes, figuring out how to best organize new spaces and places, and waiting for weeks until our new home actually feels like home.

However, this time we're doing things a little differently.

We always knew that at some point we'd have to do a major purge of our possessions since we've been planning on paring way down once Justin heads to med school. However, we didn't expect that to happen until at least next summer, so now we're scrambling to purge unnecessary items. Due to renting an actual house, we've I've gotten into this nasty habit of -ahem- acquiring [ and creating ] more items than we I maybe should have. Some vintage Ball jars to use as vases? Sure, I'll take four. Perhaps a decorative wall hanging? I'll craft some and then also take one for free from my mom! This has resulted in a few too many items than we actually need and I'm feeling just a bit overwhelmed at the sight of them as I mentally pack items into imaginary boxes.

Luckily my in-laws are going to be having a garage / estate sale in the near future and are graciously accepting our sell-able items to include in the sale. Even before I officially knew we needed to move, I decided to go through the house, really analyze our possessions and donate what we no longer used / needed [ a late summer cleaning, if you will ].

I ended up with five boxes.

What exactly was in those boxes, I couldn't tell you. I think there were some kitchen items I hadn't even realized we owned, old t-shirts from [ I kid you not ] freshman year of high school, four glass flower vases [ uhhh, why did I take those Ball jars?? ], a makeup bag that held a bunch of old and elastic-shot hairties [ which I did throw out! ], and two pairs of dance pants that I hadn't worn since I performed in my high school marching band's "visual unit" [ even though I call it dance team, Justin still mocks me about this because we definitely used colorguard flags...yeah, I was a nerd ] during my junior year. Just to name a few.

All this made me realize how crazy things can get in just a couple of years. I mean, we've only been married for a little over two, and yet we have enough stuff that we don't even use to fill at least five boxes. Not to mention the fact that when I went back through after deciding to sell some items in the estate sale, I filled another four. Plus some floor rocker chairs we picked up during a Black Friday in our first year of marriage that we've used twice [ ...we had soooo much fun in Target on that Black Friday... ]. Ridiculous.

After hemming and hawing over a couple of different places, we finally decided on a loft space that doesn't have any closets [ intriguing, no? ]. The bathroom is literally a shower, toilet, sink, two towel hooks, and medicine cabinet. Our kitchen has about a third of the storage space as we have now. Our washer and dryer will be in the same area as our dining space. We may have to get some portable wardrobes because there just won't be any space to hang my already closetful of clothes. 

But you know what?
I'm so excited about it!

As weird as it may sound to some, I'm looking forward to living minimalistically, even more so than we already are [ which in all honesty, we really aren't ]. I'm excited about having our small number of important items and living with less. Why? Because at the end of the day, all those objects that we have are just those - objects. They're not relationships, they're not emotions and they're certainly not what dictates who we are. I'm hoping and praying that having less will motivate me to focus more on what really matters in my life [ as cheesy and cliche as that may sound ] and less on materialistic and worldly items that I and so many others have fallen victim to prioritizing more than once.

We will by no means be in want with where we will live [ it's a very nice [ and safe ] place, after all ] or our lifestyles. We will not be in fear of just getting by each month. We will not suffer like so so SO many do around the world. But it is less for us than what we have right now. And it's the start of the stress that is school bills, loans to pay and one day having only one of us holding a job while the other is in school.

That's what else is making life crazy these days - school starts in less than a month.
Back to Justin's 14-hour days.
Back to late night studying [ instead of late night Netflixing ].
Back to spending my time at work reading textbooks rather than magazines.
Back to seeing my other half for approximately a half hour before we go to bed absolutely exhausted on weekdays.
Back to carrying that dang huge bag filled to the brim with notebooks, folders and textbooks my iPad full of e-books [ that last one I'm pretty excited about, actually ].

But before that even begins to sink in, we have a few other things on the docket for summer: backpacking for five days in the Porcupine Mountains in the U.P. and my good college friend's wedding extravaganza!

I think those fun and exciting things far outweigh the stress-inducing items.
Though if you ask me in three months [ aka the dead middle of the semester ], I may be singing a different tune...

Just remind me to chase a peony.

NPR