LAST EDITED ON 07-13-05 AT 08:34 AM (EST)I have ADHD and I'm a total disorganized, time-abusing slob. Moving is one of the most stressful times for me as a result. This started as a rant on my blog (and a great way to waste even MORE time) but I figured I should turn it into something a little more useful and use it for the Story Competition.
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It's T minus one week until I have to be out of my house. We're slated to transfer our furniture to storage on Sunday and I still have a thousand and one things to do. Why on EARTH is this so difficult? I am going to fall back into the usual trap, as always. I swear, it's just like elementary school all over again. My best laid plans for becoming the organized little student work for about two weeks. I have everything in my Trapper Keeper organized and color coded by subject. And every single year - just as the year before - I start regressing back to my old sloppy and ADHD-induced ways before we even make it to Open House night. Why I bother, I don't know.
But, as always, I always try to remain optimistic like the Little Engine that could. "I can do this", I tell myself. If I will it, it just might happen! But of course, it never does. And this is my typical moving calendar of events...
1. Three to four months prior to a move, I start planning the move down to every possible detail. I make pretty color-coordinated charts and graphs of exactly what I plan to do and when.
2. My beautiful charts and graphs mysteriously disappear.
3. Ten weeks out, I start to talk about how great I'm doing with the planning process even though I've done nothing remotely close to what was on my now missing schedule.
4. Two months out, I start actually packing things (as opposed to the packing I've been doing in my mind for the past month - "yeah, I'll put that in this box, and this I can sell..."). Of course, I don't pack the practical things that I'll never use, I pack the things I use regularly (probably because they're the only things I readily have access to on a given day). I have a thing for packing my clothes WAY too soon, which only makes a bigger mess when I have to keep unpacking and repacking every few days. I don't know why I continue to do this...I do the same for trips, too. I pack at least a month in advance of any trip I'm about to take. You'd think I was some organized freak or something.
5. A month out, I start actually thinking about how much work I have to do. Up until this point, I've deluded myself into thinking that 'this time would be different' - somehow I'd actually do what I set out to do! HA! If nothing else, it's good for a chuckle (while I'm wallowing in piles of clothing, 5 thousand dishes I never use, hundreds of long-since-expired canned goods, and about 50 years worth of paperwork that I've only ever looked at when I'm packing).
6. Three weeks out, I actually start to do some 'real' packing...packing a few things that I won't use (which I should have done a month ago) and doing a lot of moving things from one room to another. It's also during this time when I start telling people that I'm "almost done" packing. Yeah, that's a good one.
7. Two weeks out, I start gathering boxes and saying things like "oh, yes, this will be so simple...it's not like I have a zillion things to pack" - possibly as a form of reassurance - but, it's most certainly delusional at best. In the process of gathering boxes and contemplating what's going to go in each box, I tape the bottoms of all of them, knowing full well that it will only add to the already trashed living space. The walking path gets considerably smaller.
8. Ten days out, I start running around all frantic-like, wondering how I got to this point yet again. I have an entire house to pack and I've managed to pack the crap under the sink that is never used, the clothes that I haven't worn in 7 years, and the stuff that I've set aside for my travels. I have fifty people to call about cancelling things, transferring things, scheduling things, and I can't remember five minutes later who I'm supposed to call.
9. A week out, I realize that there is absolutely no way in Hades that I'll be able to finish this monumental task without cutting corners. Cutting corners includes throwing random things into random boxes. This is what I like to call "fevered packing". I know I won't be able to sort the things out the way I'd neatly planned out nearly a year ago, so I just start filling boxes with whatever I can get my hands on, be that laundry, random useless papers, busted computer disks, toy particles, bottles of lotion that explode and ruin everything in said box.
10. A few days out, I start to relax, thinking that somehow, a magic moving fairy will come in and finish my job for me. Yes, I actually think that somehow the job will get done despite me and my hurricane-styled tactics. I need serious help.
11. MOVING DAY! I haven't slept since the day I started dreaming about magic moving fairies. I have to actually, like, clean the bathroom and kitchen. See, if I had been cleaning all this time, I could have blamed the magic moving fairy visions on the fumes. No such luck. I'm probably more sane once I've had my head inside the Easy-Off caked oven for a few hours, anyway. Have I mentioned how much cleaning and I do not get along?
12. About six hours into moving day, I sit down to eat about fifty pounds of chocolate and rock back and forth in a cobweb-filled corner somewhere. I think I just sat on a thumbtack, but I'm in such a daze right now that I can't be sure. Someone hold me.
It happens every.single.time. I cannot get out of this horrible cycle. I desperately need a 12-step program or some sort of top secret 'clean camp'.
Oh...and if there happens to be a magic moving fairy out there, please...make yourself known. I will pay in an endless supply of four-year-old canned goods, boxed pasta, hangers, and ready-taped boxes.
*etf glaring typos
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