I mentioned in my previous entry that we’ve moved to a new house. Now I can’t decide which I dislike more: packing or unpacking.

We’d hired movers, but only to move the furniture and other things we couldn’t move ourselves. They also agreed to take any boxes we had packed by the day of the move. So we were scurrying to keep ahead of them; I got to the point where I was practically tossing things into boxes just to get them packed up. Tossing things in boxes is an EASY way to pack. Unfortunately, it turns unpacking into a ridiculous mess.

On the other hand, methodical organized packing takes a lot longer, and I’m not sure the time-save on the other end makes up for the time spent trying to decide which items should go into a box together, especially when they’re going to a house with a different layout and different distribution of storage areas.

We decided (well, in a “we don’t have time for this” way) not to do any keep/toss/donate triage during our packing. It seemed like it would be easier to cull out the things we wanted to get rid of after we were in the new house and had a better idea of what we’d actually have space for. I still think this was the right approach, but now it’s getting harder to find space for all the things that we’ll be sending off to Goodwill! Does anyone want a couple dozen mismatched wineglasses?

(And given how infrequently we drink wine, it’s amazing how many wineglasses we had… and how many we’ve decided to keep. We might need to make a second pass through what we’ve got on the shelves. Later. Right now I just need to get all these boxes empty.)

(Maybe it would help if I emptied some wine bottles too as I go along.)

We have a huge bonus room that we’ve designated as the playroom. It’s full of toys now, and eventually they’ll be sharing space with a TV for video games. At the moment there’s no space for anything but the toys, and somehow the boys have managed to spread out everything they own almost corner to corner. We’ve let this happen because letting the kids entertain themselves means more time for us parents to unpack boxes.

Some day we’ll have everything unpacked, and if we’re lucky, it will be before the next time we move.