Last weekend, we moved my daughter out of college housing for the last time. As a senior, her housing was a literal house with three other girls. Four girls, five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, eat-in kitchen and finished space that used to be a garage, along with a small back porch and a yard the university took care of for them. It was basically a great little starter house with fewer responsibilities, and she only got to live there for a little over a semester. I felt really cheated for her.
She had a lot of fun putting her room together and adapting to living in a house instead of a dorm, and she had the belongings to prove it. She'd gone up once after spring break to bring some things home and had found out on the way home that she wouldn't be returning to face-to-face classes this semester.
And so, on the designated day in May at the designated hour (COVID-19 had led to staggered move-out times, with no overlapping between roommates), we arrived to pick up everything the university had already packed up. With the house to ourselves, we did a little sorting through the boxes in the common rooms, a little culling of the boxes in her room and managed to fit everything into the backs of our two cars. She got to do a masked visit with a few friends in other houses who had the same move-out time that she did and before we left, she and I spent a little time sitting in her living room processing it all. In the end, it was a low-drama move out and we didn't have to leave anything of substance behind except memories.
Then we got home, and the real adventure began.
She had started readying her bedroom prior to the move out, and the piles of things to be sold or donated had already begun to form. Now, they are larger.
She is methodical in her work, and thorough, putting her styles to work and consulting with me when she needs a second opinion. And while the piles are setting my teeth on edge a bit, the brainstorming, combined with my first summer off in several years, is nudging me to do some re-organizing and re-configuring of my own. On Saturday night, I appropriated a cast-off drawer unit of hers and re-did a section of my office. Things are still a little chaotic because what was a good move aesthetically triggered some organizational challenges I've yet to resolve. It's a process.
I'm trying to be patient with the piles, knowing that they are temporary, and part of a larger process. She has her own styles and her own plan of attack and she's made enormous progress in a short time. Meanwhile, I love being her assistant/consultant as she transforms her room into a transitional living space and inspires me to make some changes of my own.
What inspires you to organize?
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