We're In!

Well, we are finally in our new rental. We still have many boxes to unload and sort through, but we're slowly plodding our way through them. It's a daunting task...checking off each box or item from a main inventory sheet of about 350 items, making sure we received it; checking for damage; recording damage, which may include photographing; and then trying to find a place in our home for each and every item.

Here's one of the moving trucks that delivered our stuff. Interesting that it says "Christ" on it, isn't it? It's with a short "i" sound, though, and has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, I believe a few of the movers were Muslim:

Here's one of the trucks with its side opened revealing several crates with our household goods in them:

Prying open the crate:

Opening up the crate with our boxes packed inside:

Another truck with more of our crates inside:

There was yet another truck behind this one with more of our stuff. I think there were about 11 crates in all.

We haven't done a move like this in a long time. This time, though, when we saw all our goods in these several crates, it kind of hit us just how much stuff we still owned. We thought we had been doing so well by purging most of those things we didn't want or need before we left. We had a yard sale, we sold items on the Internet, we consigned stuff, and other items we just donated or gave away - it was quite a bit of stuff. But when we saw all our worldly good piled together in three trucks, it seemed like we still owned too much stuff. We knew we had some more purging to do.

Here are some of the movers on lunch break sitting amongst a bunch of packing paper that had been wrapped around our items:

Here are a few photos of the unpacking and organizing task that was before us:

Our "wall of books" as we call it:

Sarah tackling the kitchen stuff:

Every time we move, we have to look at all our stuff again. We have to evaluate each item as we unpack it and ask ourselves if we really need it. We really thought we were on our way to living more minimally this time with all the stuff we got rid of, but we are seeing that we have a very long way to go still. I don't know if we'll ever be minimalists in the true sense, but we know we definitely want to get rid of more of our stuff and be surrounded by less clutter ... which means less stuff to move, to find a place for, to take up space, to clean, to maintain, to fix, etc.

So, as we unpack our boxes, we hope to purge even more of our possessions, paring them down to the necessities. This will not be an easy task, but moving definitely provides a great opportunity to do this.

We are grateful to be in our new place, though. We are grateful, also, for the many prayers that brought us here and God's unfailing faithfulness in all things.

~ Janet